SAN DIEGO, CA, June 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE – This is a CLARIFICATION and EXPANSION of the press release dated June 18, 2019. Upper Street Marketing Inc. (OTC Markets: symbol UPPR) and its agricultural partners have fully planted their first hemp crop on 1,200 acres of Colorado farmland and are now less than 16 weeks from being able to start processing the biomass into high-grade cannabidiol (CBD) isolates and distillates.
Pictures of the 330 acres UPPR has cultivated in Center, Colorado are available at our website: www.upperstreetmarketing.com. The company has also sourced the crop from roughly 900 additional acres owned and operated by Fox Organic Forms, which will be ready for extraction in late September or early October.
“As we ramp up to solve the global CBD deficit, the weather and an expert cultivation team were on our side,” said UPPR Chief Executive Officer, Joseph Earle. “Now all we need to do is let Nature translate that effort into a CBD-rich harvest ready for our extraction facilities.”
Hemp plants generally require 16 weeks before the flowers are ripe enough to develop oil-bearing seeds. At that point, the mature biomass is ready for harvest, separation and processing.
Getting the crop in the ground now puts UPPR on track to meet its extraction start date in early 4Q2019. Since the company owns a 100,000 square-foot facility in Center, Colorado as well as leases a 12,000 square-foot laboratory in San Diego, California, management anticipates that converting the biomass into high-grade CBD isolates and distillates will be a relatively straightforward process.
The company has also retained FDA-licensed contract pharmaceutical manufacturer, PrimaPharma Inc., (http://www.primapharma.net) to ensure that all products meet regulatory and commercial FDA cGMP standards. Most recently, UPPR has partnered with ICC Inc. (http://icc-inc.net) to build out the manufacturing systems that will turn industrial quantities of raw hemp into high-grade CBD products to meet parabolically increasing commercial demand.
Previously disclosed yield projections suggest that this season’s overall 1,200-acre production profile translates to 45,000 kilograms of high-quality CBD. As demand for the newly legalized, non-psychoactive chemical compounds formerly locked within the hemp plant expands, UPPR is ready to help fill the gap.
Fortune magazine and other publications have contemplated a 100X surge in CBD consumption between now and 2023, at which point UPPR and other producers will need to ramp up output from a currently minimal 55,000 kg of isolate to as much as 3.5 million kg.
UPPR research indicates that approximately 55,000 acres of hemp were harvested in 2018 across North America, enough to satisfy only 2 million kg of retail demand. On that basis, cultivation will need to expand to over 250,000 acres simply to meet projected 2020 consumption.
In the meantime, recent wholesale pricing on CBD isolates is running above $3,000 per pound ($7,000 per kilogram) and many organic hemp farmers target yields of 15% CBD or higher. As such, the acreage UPPR and its partners have planted can conservatively produce a crop worth the equivalent of $200,000 per acre, or a revenue event topping $200 million.
Fox Organic Farms will receive 50% of the ultimate proceeds from biomass harvested from its land (roughly $150 million in total) while the rest goes to UPPR in exchange for its processing services. In addition, all revenue ($50 million) from UPPR’s 330-acre planting will pass to the company to validate its seed-to-consumer business plan.
As such, while not all of the $200 million in total commercial value in this initial cultivation season will end up with UPPR, the company’s share of the ultimate harvest is tracking well above previously disclosed targets.
“Even though we have partnered with third parties to supply at least 2 million pounds of hemp biomass this season, it will be especially satisfying to process our own crop as well,” CEO Earle said.
“While we’re executing parts of our strategic plan up to a year ahead of schedule, our initial cultivation and extraction framework remains in place to exceed our revenue target for 2019. So far, so good.”
About Upper Street Marketing and CBD
An estimated 7% of Americans are currently consuming CBD products, with that population conservatively expanding 30% (to 25 million adults) by 2025. Now fully legal as a non-psychoactive product of industrial hemp, CBD has been promoted as an effective treatment for everything from arthritis to insomnia. To date, the only FDA-approved uses are for two rare forms of childhood epilepsy. With one of the only integrated “seed to consumer” platforms for participating in all phases of the industry from crop to value-added commercial and clinical product development, UPPR intends to be a leader in FDA cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) capabilities in the hemp and CBD marketplace.
Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release may be "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend", and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company or its management, identify forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections about the Company's business, based, in part, on assumptions made by management. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may, and probably will, differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such statements could be affected by risks and uncertainties related to: (i) our ability to execute the Company's business plans with the uncertainty of agricultural crops (ii) product demand, market, and customer acceptance of the Company's products, (iii) the Company's ability to obtain financing to expand our operations, (iv) the Company's ability to attract qualified sales representatives, (v) competition, pricing and development difficulties, (vi) the Company's ability to conduct the business if there are changes in laws, regulations, or government policies related to the Company's products, (vii) the Company's ability to conduct operations if it faces product recalls, and (viii) general industry and market conditions and growth rates and general economic conditions. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release.