Grow your own home

We revive hemp culture and continue the hemp-linen tradition in modern way

Cooperative crop
Hemp shive
Hemp concrete and insulation

Vision

In Slovakia based cluster is focused on research and development of new or innovated hemp products. It has, together with Hemp cooperative, taken the role of partner institution for hemp industry advancement and technologically aligned companies. Goal is to ensure long-term sustainable advancement of hemp manufacturing with high added and ecological value. Applying cooperative and circular economy aims to create interaction of specializations in development and manufacturing of organic commodities from regional crude.

Development of cladder boards

The development role of the so-called dry technology is pressed boards or panels made of hemp sheath (high volume) and recycled materials. The first output is the HEMREC 550 board, but further tests of various volume ratios, densities and binders are underway for use in construction and furniture production.

Products with the expected properties and lower weight will relieve environmental burdens, reduce emissions from processing, production, transport and help reduce logging.
The following are prototype boards with binders that are completely compostable so that the boards will be able to return to the biological cycle at the end of their life cycle.

We consider this to be real recycling!

Innovations in building mixtures
The "wet" technology used in hemp construction is examined and modified from the point of view of active ingredients and their ratios, as well as in relation to local resources. These are modified filling and plaster mixtures so that they form a complete building system.

Machinery and equipment relating to the primary processing of hemp straw are also the subject of
innovation, e.g. in their mobile version for use in regional growing cycles. Another group are production lines, single-purpose 
machines for the production of the abovemntioned building materials.

CONECO 2019

Together with our partner SK-Tex, we participated in an international construction fare on March 27-30, 2019, which was marked by healthy housing, energy savings and design solutions, with cross - section of materials and components for construction and reconstruction.

We have introduced a thermal and sound insulation partition system made of HemRec boards and panels Ekosene of recycled textile or hemp fiber, which, in addition, are unrivaled in work with interior humidity.

Innovation festival

Konopné družstvo and Laudatosi s.r.o. - members of Hemp Cluster have attended innovation festival https://inovato.sk/inofest/on 16th of September 2020 where 39 Slovak companies and creative teams presented it's newest innovations. Uniqueness of hemp construction materials has atracted attention of not only builders, but also deputies of ministries.

From September 2021 to December 2023 we are implementing the project "Hemp Cluster as a focus of Hemp alliance innovations", with the objectives of growth of research and development and innovation capacities in industry and services, cluster support and the business network, in particular for the benefit of SMEs. It is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, in the Operational Program Integrated Infrastructure, priority axis Support for research, development and innovation and the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic, as an intermediary body for the OP.

On October 14, 2021, the Hemp Cluster General Assembly was held in Šurany. The cluster authorities discussed 11 negotiating points and adopted 23 resolutions following the start of the ERDF-supported 313010ASH2 project, the recertification of the management bronze certificate under the ECCP / ESCA methodology and the transition from HC to an action plan fulfilling the set tasks of the approved HC Strategic Plan until 2025.

In December 2021, Hemp Cluster defended the recertification of the Bronze Label European Cluster Excellence Initiative according to the methodologies of the European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis, whose Benchmarking Report is a source of funding for the further development of the cluster organization.

On June 29, 2022, in the Cikker Hall of the Banská Bystrica historical town hall, we held a "Hemp Cultivation Travel Map", where members and partners of the cluster presented the available options for evaluating this "queen" of cultivated plants to a substantial part of Slovak growers. We mapped the capacities and conditions in the regions, emphasized the topic of creating regional processing capacities, short supply chains, and looked for ways to implement them in networking. In the next steps, we will build a functional system of green industry based on existing cooperation, which fulfills not only the cluster strategy, but also several national and EU development policies.

On August 18-21, 2022, at the 47th annual Agrokomplex international agricultural and food exhibition in Nitra, Hemp Cluster, in cooperation with the Konopný dvor platform, introduced exhibition participants to the far-reaching possibilities of hemp. Not only at the stand in hall M3, where the subjects of regenerative and ecological agriculture were concentrated, but also in a series of lectures and professional discussions: Ing. Miriam Sláviková "Return of sown hemp to Slovak fields" and Ing. Dušan Knezovič "Modern use of hemp seeds". In addition to educating the user public, we met several potential partners for cultivation and eco-construction.

Cross-sectoral cooperation has led our cluster to a bible of innovative entities in the partner Slovak Plastics Cluster (pp.10-11)
https://portal.spklaster.sk/images/Inovacie_v_oblasti_spracovania_plastov.pdf

The hemp cluster is presented as an example of production based on the principles of bioeconomics in the Slovak Republic within a publication issued on the basis of monitoring the Danube region by the DanuBioValNet project. You can find the profile on p. 23 (where membership in the partner Bioeconomy clusters is incorrectly stated)
http://www.interreg-danube.eu/uploads/media/approved_project_output/0001/30/a319626f134bfa2747eab95550024252de5b37c0.pdf

Grow your own home