Robertet forms JV for broad spectrum hemp extracts in US market
The joint venture includes Oregon based company Klersun. The company has a CO2 extraction facility located in Portland and sources its raw material within the US. One of its specialties is a broad spectrum hemp extract with what the company bills as ‘non detectable’ levels of THC.
Bob Weinstein, PhD, head of Robertet USA, said to the uninitiated, Robertet is known mostly as a fragrance and flavor house. But he said the company has a long history in natural materials and brings many more competencies to the table rather than just making things smell and taste good.
Supply chain experience
“Our company has been based on natural raw materials since 1850,” Weinstein told NutraIngredients-USA. “Right now I’d say our business is 37% in fragrance, 37% in flavor and 25% in natural raw materials.”
“We have farms around the world. We built a business on botanicals for fragrance and taste, and we recognized long ago the importance of understanding the supply chain from seed to taste. Now we have a business with about $600 million in sales worldwide,” he said.
Weinstein said Robertet has recently branched out and is using that supply chain experience in its new business ventures.
“In the past two or three years we began another business division in health and beauty,” Weinstein said. “Around the same time we started thinking about CBD. We decided to partner with Klersun, which is a relatively new company but with great management.”
Robertet can help with its vast supply chain management experience, Weinstein said. Understanding and managing the variables inherent in botanicals manufacture is a key element of delivering consistent flavors and fragrances based on these materials.
Making an easier to use hemp extract
And using that flavor and fragrance expertise will be a key to broader acceptance of broad spectrum hemp extracts, the company says. At the moment, many hemp extracts are on the market without much modification. They’re smelly, exhibiting a concentrated dose of the pungent odor of the parent plant. Cannabis aficionados don’t mind, or perhaps better put, are willing to put up with the odor, but it would be unacceptable in a topical product or a food or beverage aimed at the mass market.
“We can create something that is very easy for customers to use,” Weinstein said. “We do all that work and provide that solution that includes the CBD along with the fragrance and the flavor including the CBD along with the fragrance and flavor. They don’t need to create their own supply chain for CBD.”
