Owner Tony Notargiacomo speaks with excitement and clarity when talking about his XYZ CBD Processing facility at 4395 Witt Road, and for good reason.
The hemp he’s grown at the location is ready, along with a high-tech greenhouse and processing equipment to refine the final products.
The operation at 4395 Witt Road has been in place since April 2021, put together during the pandemic and now in sight of delivering its goods. Notargiacomo is ready to make some key hires to refine his company’s products and jump-start via marketing and full production his series of hemp products designed for various medicinal purposes.
Marketing “is the big thing we’re doing right now,” he said. “What I’m trying to do right now is to hire for about six positions.”
Those positions are for a quality assurance manager, a CBD processing tech, two junior processing assistants to support the tech, a facility and farming operations manager to upkeep and maintain facility buildings, equipment and the property, a marketing/sales manager and a president to manage the day-to-day operations.
“The goal is just to hire people from Simpson County,” he said.
Notargiacomo is not a farmer by trade. Far from it. While he has family members in the ag industry, he has a movie industry background. He was the executive producer of Dallas Buyers Club and owns the rights to the blockbuster hit, which won three Academy Awards.
“It takes a village right? It’s not just like I did it. I was a piece of it,” he said of Dallas Buyers Club.
“My family has a lot of background in farming (on the East Coast). But I was in the movie industry for just a minute, had some success there, and I was thinking what else I was going to do.
“I have a friend who is still on the cannabis side in Colorado. He has one of the original companies in Colorado. I lived in Colorado from ‘95 to about 2005. In 2017, I starting thinking I really wanted to do this. I really thought the best place to do it was Kentucky. It’s one of the best places in the country to grow hemp, especially southcentral Kentucky. And they have great farmers here.”
His research into investing in the hemp industry led him to Franklin — for the fertile soil conducive to growing hemp and its strategic location to Nashville and its international airport and transportation. With a curing process similar to tobacco, farmers here know the methodology.
“Those skillsets are here, just in a different way. So I thought this was going to be the best place,” Notargiacomo said. “Incredibly blessed to find this property in 2018. And this just hit it out of the park. It was ideal. We’re right on the border. It takes about 35 minutes to get to downtown Nashville. Close to an international airport. We’re 25 minutes from Bowling Green.”
He has become acquainted with musicians in Nashville and wants to market his business as a venue for shooting music videos and having events where locals can come and listen to music and see the operation.
While Bardstown has its bourbon trail, Notargiacomo wants a similarly themed hemp trail, with his Franklin facility as a key stop.
“The public can come and see how hemp is grown, inside and outside, and also from a processing standpoint, and how we do things, from the beginning to the end,” he said. “We’re doing everything from the beginning to end, all here in Kentucky.”
His interest in the industry was somewhat sparked by his parents and others’ reliance on prescriptions to ease the pains of advancing age.
His father “started taking it, literally got off a half dozen daily medications and he’s doing much better,” he said.
Notargiacomo wants to have his products ready to go in 60 days, he said.
Original article: https://www.franklinfavorite.com/news/local/article_c00383fe-e131-57c8-9bea-3cbf9aeae582.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share