Hemp Drying and Processing Facility Opens in Indiana

Agricultural services firm Third Wave Farms held an event last Friday to mark the opening of its new hemp drying and processing facility in Kokomo, IN.

Third Wave Farms spent $2.5 million to open the site, The Kokomo Tribune reported. The 22,000-sq-ft plant has a daily drying and processing capacity of more than 75,000 lb. Material processed at the site is used in cannabidiol (CBD) products.

“At Third Wave Farms, we recognized early on that in order to bring quality grown hemp into the marketplace we needed to have infrastructure to support post-harvest handling,” Mike Lewis, a co-founder of the firm, said in a company press release. “This drying facility will not only protect farmers’ crops in the short term, but also provide an extra level of protection by allowing material to be stored and marketed when the demand is at its peak.”

The company installed a customized, high pressure low heat conveyor system in the facility that dries material to a stable moisture level and a commercial Python Trimmer capable of processing hundreds of pounds of hemp flowers per hour. 

“Third Wave Farms’ ability to process green hemp flower quickly is critical to helping farmers mitigate risk by ensuring crops get dried quickly and are in a controlled, food safe environment,” the company said in its release. 

10 workers were hired to staff the facility. 

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