Hemp is proving to be an important resource for the bio-economy, but the industrial chain needs to be rebuilt
It is an environmentally friendly, hardy plant that is easy to grow, without polluting pesticides and herbicides, combats soil erosion and even succeeds in cleaning up polluted soils. We are talking about hemp, the cultivation of which is still opposed today and its use in the textile sector is problematic. «In Italy there is no longer the capacity to transform the fibre into thread. You can cultivate the plant but the industrial part is missing, because there are no longer machines that can process it,» says Mauro Vismara, entrepreneur and founder of the company Maeko, which produces natural fabrics and yarns such as hemp, nettle, soya, crabyon, bamboo, linen, organic cotton, and Yak staple. The result of this is that the company has to process hemp in the Turin textile district by mixing it with other vegetable fibres because the specific equipment for processing hemp no longer exists in Italy.
