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Mayfield Hemp Facility to Bring 80 New Jobs

Mayfield Hemp Facility to Bring 80 New Jobs
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By West Kentucky Star Staff
Dec. 14, 2018 | MAYFIELD
By West Kentucky Star Staff Dec. 14, 2018 | 10:35 AM | MAYFIELD
Now that legislators have cleared the way for legal industrial hemp production, a manufacturer has announced plans to build a hemp processing facility in Mayfield.

Graves County Economic Development and its partners announced Friday in a press release that hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) manufacturer GenCanna Global USA, Inc. will create more than 80 local jobs with a new $40 million multi-purpose processing facility in Mayfield.

GenCanna will reportedly be purchasing land in the Graves County Opportunity Zone for the new facility. The company will be significantly expanding their existing production capacity, which will include debuting new processing technology in the region. 

Local engineering, contracting and supply firms are engaged on the project, with start dates coming shortly after property closing. 

GenCanna's other facility in west Kentucky, a 120,000 square foot building in downtown Paducah, will be a supply-chain partner of the future Mayfield production. 

GenCanna Global President Steve Bevan told the crowd that they included the word Global in their name because they truly believed that their products would be everywhere.

"We've got our home base, we've planted our flag in Winchester, Kentucky, and then we started looking for other options for expansion. Where else could we be? We looked around the world and around the country and we decided that the place to plant our second flag was here in west Kentucky."

Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner and hemp advocate Ryan Quarles celebrated the announcement as a sign of the future economic growth this industry will bring to the region. Former Ag Commissioner and current US Rep. James Comer recalled the infancy of the idea and how he campaigned on it. State Rep. Richard Heath also remembered the early legislative discussions and excitement about hemp as a money-making crop in Kentucky.

GenCanna began operations in Winchester, KY in 2014 as inaugural members of the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Pilot Program. Company leaders say they plan to start the facility's construction in February 2019 and be ready for harvest in the fourth quarter of the year.
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