Ecofibre Ltd. — headquartered in the United States in Georgetown, Ky. — recently acquired the businesses and assets of TexInnovate, a key manufacturing partner in North Carolina comprised of five businesses. TexInnovate founder Jeff Bruner was named president of Ecofibre company Hemp Black, and has resigned as vice chairman of Quantum Materials — a company he founded more than 30 years ago — in order to focus his efforts on Hemp Black.
“This is an incredibly important strategic move for Ecofibre,” said Ecofibre CEO Eric Wang. “For the past two years we have worked to develop a platform of intellectual property that allows us to sustainably deliver the natural antimicrobial and conductive properties of hemp into existing manufacturing supply chains for textiles, composites, coatings, paints and other industries.
“Through this period Jeff Bruner and the team at TexInnovate has been a very close partner in co-developing IP, building processes to deliver Hemp Black capabilities at industrial scale, designing, engineering and acquiring specialized equipment and developing/manufacturing the recently launched Hemp Black face mask to market.”
“Two years ago when I was introduced to the concept, research and patents being developed by Hemp Black, I quickly became a significant shareholder,” Bruner said. “Since 2018, I continue to see the very strong commercial potential for this technology to not only solve problems that our customers find today, but more importantly advance the quality and technical aspects of a very wide array of products. I am very excited to lead Hemp Black with Eric and his team and help innovate the high-performance textile industry to another level,” Bruner continued. “During my career there have been several innovations that led to step function shifts in our industry. I believe Hemp Black has the technology to underpin another step function shift in how textiles can enable and perform across a wide range of industries.”
September/October 2020
