About Us

Founder and COO of happi hemp paper is Mr Kym James Merrett a qualified Chemical Engineer who lives in Melbourne and has spent his whole working career of 40 yrs plus in the Australian and New Zealand Pulp&Paper industry beginning as a process engineer at the Australian Paper Maryvale P&P mill in Victoria followed by various sales and technical support roles for two of the worlds leading pulp&paper machinery manufacturers namely Valmet of Finland and Andritz of Austria . Kym started his own company Fibertech Pty Ltd in the year 2000 selling various consumable items and process technology improvements to local P&P mills in ANZ and to other wood fiber processing industries including MDF Panelboard and Fibre Cement manufacturers.

During his career, Kym was either in casual contact with or directly involved with the P&P mills and persons who were testing locally grown Hemp fiber for suitability for paper making .

The APPM Burnie P&P mill in Tasmania ( no longer in existence) first laboratory tested Tasmanian grown Hemp in 1993. The Australian Newsprint Boyer mill in Tasmania ( now owned and operated by Norske Skog Norway) did extensive laboratory testing of Tasmanian Hemp in 1997. These laboratory test results confirmed what was generally known about Hemp fiber suitability for paper making since Hemp fiber has been used for paper making mainly in China , India and the Middle East for hundreds maybe thousands of years . These test results showed that the woody hurd component of the Hemp stalk/straw was rather short and weak fiber , still applicable for paper making but giving a weaker inferior paper . However the long Bast fibers can produce a very strong paper if processed correctly . In addition to Hemp being tested by these P&P mills , a local Melbourne man Mr Adrian Clarke / Fibrenova Pty Ltd was developing his own design for a Hemp straw mechanical Decorticator machine to separate the long Bast fibers from the woody hurd and sending several bags of both Bast and Hurd to Fibertech for possible value adding.

Local involvement

All this local involvement with Hemp testing over many years and the acquired knowledge of what is required to produce a quality paper from the Hemp Bast fiber did materialise during the worlds longest Covid lockdown period 2020-2021 in Melbourne, when Kym built a pilot scale plant feeding Hemp straw from local Hemp seed growers to separate the Bast Fiber from the hurd and further convert the Bast fiber to a quality hand made paper using a unique process now trademark registered as happi ™ “hemp air pulp paper interchain” . The happi™ pulping process is purely mechanical, – no chemicals nor heat are used . The transfer medium to and from each stage in the process chain is high velocity air ; – hence ”hemp air pulp paper interchain “