The Dallas Morning News reports
Delta AG planted its first crop of over 5,000 acres of hemp across Colorado, Kentucky and West Texas in May 2020 and just harvested its second crop of over 10,000 acres in October.
In less than two years, the business has reached profitability. It did $16 million in revenue in 2021 and is projecting $100 million in revenue for 2022, and Delta’s founders say they hope to be a multibillion-dollar company by 2025.
“We have not scratched the surface yet,” said John Paul Merritt, chairman of Delta AG.
The founders — Merritt, chief operating officer Nick Strawn and CEO George Overbey — met working at Dallas-based independent mineral investment company Pony Oil, which was founded by Merritt and generates over $100 million a year in revenue. They noticed similarities between the hemp industry and the oil and gas business in the early 2000s, Merritt said.
“The land-based production of it. The yield is on a per-unit basis, like crude oil. And it had a bunch of revenue streams that could be pulled off of it,” Strawn said. He previously incubated two cannabis companies with the support of Pony Oil.
