Chad Rosen:

I like to often say that hemp really isn't that unique, from our perspective, in the sense that it's an oilseed crop. Right? But what really is ... And it's got its nutritional characteristics that are quite unique, and we can kind of talk about that later in the segment. But what is really kind of interesting and unique about hemp is how diverse it is, right? It's a plant that has a number of different materials and ingredients that can be derived from the same plant, and because of all those different features of the plant and the way it fits into so many needs for humanity, it presents itself with an opportunity to be pulled through, from the market's perspective, in a variety of way, whether it's a fiber that's going into wovens and technical non-wovens or the medicinal side of the cannabinoids or it's the proteins and oils that have ideal features in human health and nutrition and just great flavor profiles and functional characteristics when it's processed in the correct way or in different ways.

I think that's what really makes it unique. But one of my advisors early on kind of hit me upside the head, and he said, "Chad, you've got to focus because there's no way that you're going to be able to boil the ocean." And so when we look at all those different categories and where our ingredients can kind of fit into solutions, whether it's food and beverage, pet, nutraceutical, skincare, we look at what's the easiest and the path of least resistance, number one, and then also the highest value for the products that we're making, obviously. Right? And so food and beverage is really where we're focused. There's this thing called generally regarded as safe by the FDA, and fortunately, hemp seeds and the hearts and the oil and the protein formats are all generally regarded by the FDA, so we're excited that there's absolutely no regulations standing in the way of hemp protein and oil of food manufacturers to be able to utilize it across any solution that they're developing. They don't have to fear any kind of reprisal from either consumers or administrative regulations that, saying, is this product safe for human consumption?

On the pet food side of things, there's bespoke legislation in different states. Montana just adopted some early legislation allowing it to be used in pet food. But it's still not available to be used in animal feed. AFCO and the USDA are still kind of doing the research that they need to do to ensure that it's safe for animal consumption, which is a little bit ironic based on the fact that, as humanity consumes a lot of animals, we're worried about products that they might eat, but we're allowed to eat those products themselves. So from my perspective, it's a little bit ironic, and we don't really focus on the food side of things.

We do produce a lot of oils, so topically, hemp seed oil, and the fact that it doesn't clog pores, is non-comedogenic, is how the formulators kind of refer to it. The hemp seed oil is just tremendous in a lot of applications for skincare and cosmetics. So we really focus on food and beverage, and skincare is our predominant. And in food and beverage world, everything from meat analog, which is predominantly where we see our ingredients performing best from a functional and flavor perspective and having the most value, all the way down to bars and even some dairy analog. So there's a lot of exciting applications that we're seeing formulators come up with solutions.