Discussing Sol Global's $30M Hemp Biomass Investment With CEO Brady Cobb

SOL Global Investments Corp. SOLCF has completed its investment in hemp biomass processing and extraction company Blühen Botanicals for $12.06 million in cash consideration and an additional $18 million in stock of SOL’s hemp and CBD-focused subsidiary, Heavenly Rx. The latter now owns 50.1 percent of Blühen.

Joe Fox, co-founder and CEO of Blühen Botanicals, will join the Heavenly Rx executive team.

What To Know

Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, Blühen said it intends to use the proceeds from the acquisition to “expand its research and engineering teams and to focus on the development and expansion of its retail operations and ecommerce sales platforms. The investment will also allow Blühen to scale up its existing high-throughput processing and extraction capabilities to meet the growing demand in the U.S. marketplace, and further expand its already robust network of expert farmers across the states of Tennessee and Kentucky,” a press release explains.

“Blühen has built a vertically integrated supply chain and a premium consumer hemp brand in a very short timeframe," Fox told Benzinga.

He said his team is proud of their accomplishments, including the recent launch of their flagship retail wellness location: “This investment from SOL Global and the partnership with Heavenly Rx will open the door to significantly more distribution channels in the international hemp market."

Why It's Important

When asked about the interest in Tennessee and Kentucky, Sol Global’s CEO Brady Cobb told Benzinga, “We chose Tennessee, and specifically, the Tobacco Belt, because it’s an area that’s had a long history with agricultural commodities and farming. It’s an area that had a history steeped in tobacco but was looking for a new crop and had already made investments toward being at the forefront of the U.S. hemp industry. We worked very closely with Sen. Mitch McConnell on the hemp farming legislation, and he’s obviously a Kentucky guy, and we just honed in on the area.”

When asked about how the new acquisition fits into Heavenly Rx’s hemp and CBD portfolio, he explained, “They’re a significant engine that’s going to drive the business. Because ultimately, the main ingredient in any CBD product is CBD isolate, and Blühen’s specialty is producing the finest quality CBD isolate out there, at a large scale. So we’re going to leverage our isolate production"

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