Tony Budden, owner and founder of Cape-Town based retailer Hemporium, sells hemp-based products ranging from cosmetics to homeware to clothing, but complains that restrictions are stunting the growth of the manufacturing sector. Growing hemp - a product of the Cannabis sativa plant - specifically for industrial use is restricted in South Africa, with any product made from the plant marked as "undesirable and dangerous", said Budden. "For 20 years we've been doing research on industrial hemp in South Africa and it's getting stuck in research. "We can never reach economies of scale and improve economic viability [on crops of] under 2ha," he said. In South Africa, not more than 2ha of hemp for industrial use is allowed to be grown. Budden imports hemp fabric from China, hemp building material from France and the UK, food and nutritional products from Germany or Canada and ropes and twine from Hungary. "The medicinal and the industrial uses shouldn't even be under debate any more," he s...
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