SOUTH Africa is set to break new ground in the construction industry with the opening of the world’s tallest Hemp Hotel, a 12-storey, 54-room building made entirely from hempcrete.
The building, located in central Cape Town, boasts a stunning view of Table Mountain and has been constructed with minimal ecological impact. The hemp bricks used in the hotel’s walls are carbon-negative and offer insulating, fire-resistant, and climate-friendly properties, making them an increasingly popular alternative to traditional construction materials.
Boshoff Muller, director of Afrimat Hemp, a subsidiary of South African construction group Afrimat, which produced the bricks for the hotel, explained the environmental benefits of using hempcrete. ‘The plant absorbs the carbon, it gets put into a block and is then stored into a building for 50 years or longer,’ he said. ‘What you see here is a whole bag full of carbon, quite literally.’
The Hemp Hotel uses ‘hempcrete’ blocks derived from the cannabis plant, which are supported by a concrete and cement structure. The industrial hemp used had to be imported from the UK as local production was banned until last year when the South African government started issuing cultivation permits. President Cyril Ramaphosa has made developing the country’s hemp and cannabis sector an economic priority, saying it could create more than 130,000 jobs.
While the cost of building with hemp is currently around 20 percent higher than traditional materials, the potential environmental benefits make it an attractive option for those looking to lower their carbon footprint. Carbon credits, which are usually associated with the planting of trees to offset carbon emissions, could help make hempcrete blocks more financially viable, according to Wihan Bekker, carbon consultant at Afrimat Hemp. ‘We can fund forests, or we can fund someone to live in a hemp house. It’s the same principle,’ he said.
Architect Wolf Wolf, whose firm is involved in several social housing projects in South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique, sees the potential for wider adoption of hemp buildings in the region. ‘It shouldn’t be just a high-end product,’ he said.
The Hemp Hotel has been ranked the ‘tallest building to incorporate hemp-based materials in the world’ by Steve Allin, director of the Ireland-based International Hemp Building Association. Muller described the Hemp Hotel as a ‘lighthouse project’ that shows hemp has a place in the construction sector.