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Eagle Hemp: Unparalleled Quality and Purity in the Hemp Business
Barry Atkins
President and COO
Eagle Hemp LLC
Contact:
813.443.6498
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFO Magazine
Published – October 26, 2020
CEOCFO: Mr. Atkins, what is the concept behind Eagle Hemp?
Mr. Atkins: Eagle Hemp is an extractor and processor of hemp. We buy hemp and processes it into CBD oil. We then compound it into different products, both retail and products for private label, people that want their own label on it or wholesalers.
CEOCFO: What is involved in extracting and how are you different, better, cheaper, faster, etc?
Mr. Atkins: We have a proprietary process that we developed so everything we do is close-
After we remove the cannabinoids from the hemp plant, we then winterize it in freezers at cryogenic temperatures as low as minus eighty degrees centigrade. We then filter it multiple times until we have an ultra-
CEOCFO: Are sellers as well as purchasers looking for a higher quality? Do they recognize that extraction quality is important or is that still not on the forefront?
Mr. Atkins: It is not on the forefront right now. There are a lot of cheap products out there now, it is pretty much a price driven market and I expect that to change as people start to see some of the impurities that are in some of these other products that do not strive for quality. A lot of these products are made in facilities such as garages or bare warehouses. Our facility was designed and built to extract and process hemp and is FDA registered.
CEOCFO: Do you see regulatory bodies getting into the mix and requiring a different level of procedure?
Mr. Atkins: That is starting to happen now. Florida has some pretty strict regulations. We are actually regulated in Florida as a food manufacturer, so we need to meet all the requirements for a facility that manufactures food. We are subject to inspections and certain cleanliness regulations. It is going to get a lot tighter and it should.
CEOCFO: You cover a wide range with quality and compliance; what makes a difference to the end product?
Mr. Atkins: Our goal is to make our product as pure as possible. We actually filter until we are below a micron. You can get an idea of how small one micron is, bacteria are three to five microns. We are filtering at about one-
We have looked at other products that are on the market and we found products that had metal pieces in them, we found products that had fibers, products that had plant material, things like that. You do not see any of that in our oil, you see an absolutely clear pure oil.
CEOCFO: Who is purchasing from Eagle Hemp?
Mr. Atkins: We are working with people that want to distribute our product both throughout the United States as well as into the EU and England. There are a lot of people out there that are interested in buying our product, either in our retail packaging under the Eagle Hemp brand name or in bulk containers that they can then bottle themselves.
Our number one priority is quality. We want to give consumers and buyers a consistent product that is safe to consume and laboratory approved.
CEOCFO: A recent press release indicates you will be able to process more than 3,000 pounds of hemp biomass per day. That is a large amount!
Mr. Atkins: It is. We have two large CO2 extractors operational now, and we have the capability to add up to 18 more.
CEOCFO: Would you tell us about the Americana Labs brand?
Mr. Atkins: That is the third-
CEOCFO: How and when did you recognize the need for real quality in this arena?
Mr. Atkins: Pretty much right at the beginning when we started this project back in early 2019, just after the 2018 Farm Bill was passed. There were a lot people out there already selling CBD even though it was not legal. When you looked at the quality of it, it was subpar.
A lot of the manufacturers are people from the marijuana industry, so a lot of the people that started companies that were going to process hemp were actually people that were for a lack of a better term “hobbyists” in the marijuana business. They were making their own products from small amounts of marijuana or hemp. A lot of the techniques that they used are still being used, so it was pretty much a homemade process.
Our business plan was to take some of these small-
CEOCFO: How do you reach out to the industry to educate as well as drive business? Are you looking at all to educate consumers?
Mr. Atkins: Before we began educating others, we wanted to ensure that we were capable of creating a high-
product. Initially, that was the main focus of our company. We attended local and national conferences like MJBiz Conference and the Florida CBD Expo to gather information of the industry and select the best techniques for processing, testing, and exporting CBD products.
We are at a point now that we feel comfortable to educate others. We are members of the hemp societies, some of the groups that are lobbyists and are looking to standardize the industry. We have hired a great team with a diverse background to differentiate us from other companies. We outreach to farmers for tips on producing high quality hemp for extraction. For consumers, our website has a lot of information to learn about dosing, the benefits are of CO2 extraction, the benefits of a pure, full-
CEOCFO: Was it difficult to settle on the best processes for each step you do along the way once you started was it easy to know what were the right things to do?
Mr. Atkins: When we started there was a lot of conflicting information about what was the right way to go. There were a lot of people that wanted to try to sell us on ethanol extraction or some other hydrocarbon extraction method. CO2 was much more expensive to get into than some of the other extraction techniques but produces a superior purer product.
Our driving philosophy is that you have to have a pure product right from the beginning in the extraction process. That way, when you go through the other processing steps, you are not removing impurities that you put in there from the extraction process. That is the main reason why we settled on CO2. The rest of the processing that we go through are all things that we developed ourselves because there really was not anything on the market that gave us what we wanted as an end product.
CEOCFO: Are you seeking funding, investment, partnerships, as you move forward?
Mr. Atkins: No. We are fully funded. We are lucky because this is a difficult time to raise money, because of the COVID problems and then there are so many people out there running around trying to raise money for operations to get them going.
CEOCFO: What is your plan for the next year or so?
Mr. Atkins: Our goal now is to start to generate significant sales and then as we bring in more sales, to start to expand our extraction capabilities and develop new products to put out in the marketplace.
CEOCFO: How do you decide on which products to go with first and which dosages, size of bottle, etc?
Mr. Atkins: We look at what we can make under the current regulations, it is very difficult to put CBD in food, the FDA has not come out with the regulations yet on how to do that so we stay away from any kind of food product. Our focus is on things that we think can help people like tinctures with different potencies. We have a pain cream that we have developed because we feel there is a big need for that. We also have a lip balm. As we see different products that are in demand in the marketplace, then we will develop products to satisfy that demand.
CEOCFO: There are so many companies in the Hemp arena. Why does Eagle Hemp standout from the crowd?
Mr. Atkins: We standout because of our attention to quality and purity. That differentiates us from a lot of the other companies out there especially when you take their products and look at it under a microscope, you can start to see all kinds of things in their oils.
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“We standout because of our attention to quality and purity” Barry Atkins