STORY

Idea

During this period, Giovanni Milazzo, CEO&Founder of Kanèsis participated to the contest Start-Up academy with the idea to produce paper by using hemp cellulose, and to realize the project in a old paper mill of his city, Catania.

Prototype

All started with a cooking pan experiment. Generated by the doubt about the difference in mechanical properties between hemp particles and fibers. By seeing that the hemp particles mixed with the PLA had way more strength in a plastic matrix, that experiment became the first step on a long road.

Patent Application

After meeting Antonio Caruso, Co-Founder of the project, they presented the patent application. But the concession was not so easy, because of the existence of other eight documents on hemp fiber: but our patent was based on the use of a different part of the plant and not the short hemp fibers.

HBP®: Filament for FDM 3D printers

After 3 months of industrial experiments and tries with our partners LATI spa and FiloAlfa, the first prototype of  a 3D printing filament produced from hemp industrial waste was born. We named it Hemp Bio Plastic, HBP®.

EXPO Milano

Expo called us to present our project in the Sicily pavilion, it was a good occasion to structure new collaborations with companies and privates.

Partnerships

Product Optimization

Standardization of raw biomasses in granulometry and humidity to achieve better performances.

MICA srl was born

First Crowdfunding

3 months were spent to prepare and define our first crowdfunding campaign. Launched on Indiegogo, it made 6000 $.

Second Crowdfunding

After summer, enforced by the last crowdfunding experience, we launched the campaign on Kickstarter and all the profit was invested in producing 3D printing filament, on the market since the fall of 2016.

Product Launch

Studies

After a study conducted in Milan in collaboration with LaMPo, it comes out that adding the hemp shives to the PLA matrix was way better that including wood dust. This study is well explained down in this page.

Launch Hemprinted

We decided to enter in the 3D printing market by launching the new brand Hemprinted to sell both filaments and printed objects.

Production of FDM 3D Printers

It starts the coworking with MakeSustainableOrganization to realize FDM 3D printers of Delta type. This printers are produced with less components and by the use of printed HBP joints that links the aluminium chassis. Light, reliable and well designed to be used by everyone.

Launch Ecompound

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The collaboration with LATI Spa was finalized to start the commercialization of new compounds added with agricultural wastes coming from italian’s supply chain. This sharing of know-how take us to a new brand for the production of sustainable high performances compounds, Ecompound.

New Material: PRUNED

New Material: WEED

From the hemp threshing in Sicily, the waste of flowers and leaves standardized with the same parameters as the HBP filament gives life to this more elastic new material, naturally green coloured: Weed.

New Material: TOMATO

By osserving the agricultural process of the cherry tomatoes we have identified the peel’s wasting flow and, once standardized the biomass, we produce this red naturally coloured filament.