Two regional New South Wales hemp industries have secured AU$10 million in government grants to build processing facilities, as part of a wider $69 million funding round supporting 14 projects in the southern Murray-Darling Basin.

Ausuntech Pty Ltd, the company behind Carrathool agglomeration Gundaline — a 14,916-hectare property owned by Chinese company Zhejiang Sunrise Garment Group — will use its funding to build what is being described as Australia’s first large-scale hemp processing plant. The facility is still awaiting NSW planning approval following a public consultation period that closed in March. According to planning documents prepared by SKM Planning, the plant would annually process 20,000 tonnes of raw hemp into 4,000 tonnes of fibre, all from hemp grown on the Gundaline property. The processed fiber would be carded and exported to China, where it would be spun and woven into clothing materials.

Meanwhile, Murray Industrial Hemp (MIH), based in Barham, received match funding to set up a facility producing low-carbon hemp concrete blocks for sustainable housing. The project will renovate a former redgum sawmill site with the installation of de-corking equipment to convert hemp bales into nuts, fiber and fines, along with a hemp brick manufacturing line. MIH Executive Director Leigh Fletcher said the funding is a major boost to the region’s emerging industrial hemp sector, citing hemp’s water efficiency as a crop and its thermal and fire-retardant properties as a building material.

The Sustainable Communities Program, jointly funded by the federal and NSW governments, aims to help communities in the Murray-Darling Basin economically diversify as water recovery efforts progress. NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty and federal Water Minister Murray Watt framed the investments as support for regional jobs and resilience amid ongoing water policy adjustments in the Basin.

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