(Photo: Submitted)
A New Brunswick company is one of the first in the world to make kitchen cabinets out of hempwood.
Karim Bhibah, the president of Eastland Group of Companies, said he came to this idea while looking for more sustainable products than traditional hardwood.
“Made with hemp, it’s much more environmentally sustainable in terms of how long it takes to grow and how easy it is, on the environment in terms of impact,” he said.
Bhibah partnered with a Kentucky-based company called Fibonacci, who owns the patent for taking hempwood stalks and using fixant, pressing them into boards. He said they’ve been partnered up since 2019 to develop everyday applications of the material.
“The next step is to further process those raw material blocks into finished goods for end users and one of the very first things we tried is a kitchen cabinet and that is how the idea came about and that’s how hempwood kitchen cabinets came about,” he said.
Bhibah said the prototype doesn’t take primer or paint like other woods, which gives it a specific “rustic” look. Another big difference in working with hempwood is that it’s 20 per cent more dense than oak and so requires sharper blades and different grains of sandpaper.
“There are differences. We have been probably the pioneers in learning and we’re still learning. This material is very new however in Canada, in general, we have a fairly respectable know-how in dealing with lumber,” he said.
Bhibah is currently working on getting exclusive licensing to press hempwood in Canada.
