DENVER, April 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRESS RELEASE -- Sanitas Peak Financial, LLC has announced the completion of a $3-million debt placement for Colorado Cultivars USA LLC (CCU), a commercial hemp company that sustainably grows and wholesales industrial hemp and provides value-added products and processing services. In 2018, CCU grew 1,500 acres and plans to have 4,000 acres under cultivation in 2019, of which, 2,000 acres will be USDA certified organic hemp. CCU is also is a certified USDA organic handler.
Proceeds from the debt placement will enable CCU to expand its production capabilities with the development of a new 8,500-square-foot processing facility at its Eaton farm location. This will enable the company to quadruple its processing capacity to meet the high demand for cannabidiol (CBD).
Colorado Cultivars was founded in 2014 and by 2015, the team had enough seeds and cloned plants to start an indoor greenhouse facility and sow nearly 300 acres. Over the past four years, the company has improved the genetics and learned best practices in crop monetization.
Sanitas Peak Co-Founders Charles Wellso and E. Nicholas Mortimer said, “Over the past several years we have met with countless businesses in the hemp space. Through their experience, the CCU team have grown the company to a point where it is clearly one of the leaders in the hemp industry and a contender to lead the industry into the next decade. We are excited to work with the team to help them take their production facilities to the next level.”
Industrial hemp has long been overlooked for its health, industrial and agricultural benefits due to regulatory restrictions, as well as a lack of financing and infrastructure development. This is poised to change with the Presidential signing of the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill. The hemp market in the U.S. is projected to hit $1.65 billion in 2021, six times what it is now according to the Marijuana Business Journal. In addition, federal legalization could triple the overall hemp market to $2.5 billion by 2022, with $1.3 billion of those sales from hemp-derived CBD products, according to New Frontier Data, a cannabis market research firm.
Sanitas Peak Partner Zeid Masri said, “We believe the industrial hemp market has tremendous potential and are excited to partner with one of the best-in-class farming and processing providers.”
In December 2018, Sanitas Peak announced the launch of a $50-million private equity fund dedicated to investing in the industrial hemp space.
