Cultivation & agronomy
Turnkey cultivation systems, genetics selection and the yield programs that render a crop commercially serious. The most substantial gains generally follow from matching the variety to the ground in which it is planted.
Global hemp & cannabis advisory
ArielMaman
A foundational architect of the American hemp industry.
Ariel Maman founded one of the United States' very first legal cannabis supply companies. In the fifteen years since, he has secured the first national carrier agreement permitting hemp to move across state lines, built a supply business to $50 million in revenue, and established licensed cultivation and government advisory programs across four continents. Operators, investors and governments retain him when they intend to move first.
15+
Years in legal cannabis and hemp, since 2009
4 firsts
Industry firsts to his name, from national logistics to aviation fuel
$50M+
Revenue built in a single venture, inside three years
4
Continents of operations and advisory work — the Americas, Europe and Asia
Institutions, partners and counterparties
- UPS
- Ministry of Agriculture, Ecuador (MAG)
- Atlantic Biomass, LLC
- Centro Ecuatoriano de Biotecnología y Ambiente (CEBA)
- Next Gen Cannabis Advisors
Academic partners on the hemp-to-fuel program
01 The operator behind the advice
Expertise earned building this industry from the ground up
Ariel Maman has been building this industry since 2009, when a legal cannabis supply chain was something one constructed from first principles. Every venture since has followed the same method: identify the capability the industry requires next, build it, and prove it at commercial scale.
Cultivation and consulting operations across the United States. The first national hemp shipping agreement concluded with a major carrier. A $50 million supply business established within three years. Licensed cultivation and ministry-level advisory work throughout Latin America, with further engagements across Europe, China and Central Asia. And, most recently, hemp commercialized as an industrial fuel. The consistent thesis is the treatment of this plant as a serious global commodity, and the construction of the infrastructure that allows it to behave as one.
Clients engage him for the problems that sit simultaneously across agronomy, regulation and commerce — the class of problem that rewards judgment over theory. That judgment is acquired in the field, on the processing floor, and across the table from a regulator. It is the reason they call.
The difference
Most advisors have read this market.
Maman helped write it.
The majority of advisors in this sector offer either operating experience or regulatory access. Maman offers both, which is precisely what these mandates require. The binding constraint is seldom agronomic: it is a license yet to be drafted, a carrier to be persuaded, a border to be opened, a buyer to be closed, or a crop to be brought onto specification.
He has resolved each of them by building the capability the industry required, and then operating it at commercial scale. That is the experience clients retain him for.
02 Services
What he is brought in to solve
Six disciplines. Most engagements commence in one and draw in two further, because these problems interlock in ways an organizational chart obscures.
Supply chain & logistics
Sourcing, processing and the movement of product, including the interstate and cross-border work that determines which operations scale. This is ground Maman has negotiated directly, at carrier and customs level.
Market entry & licensing
Establishing operations in a new jurisdiction: license applications, regulatory strategy, and working relationships with the agencies drafting the rules. He has advised at national level while a framework was being written.
Business development
Partnerships, joint ventures and offtake agreements — the structures that convert a promising operation into a contracted one, on terms that withstand counterparty scrutiny.
Sales & revenue
Pipeline, distribution and pricing for companies whose product is strong and whose distribution is ready to widen. Generally the most immediate lever available where revenue must move.
Diligence & advisory
A clear assessment of an asset, a management team or a market before capital is committed, and board-level counsel through the turnaround where the decision is to acquire and improve.
03 How the work gets done
A purpose-built team, with Maman engaged throughout
Every engagement is staffed to the problem. Maman assembles a team from a network of industry specialists developed over fifteen years — the particular agronomist, regulatory counsel, processing engineer or capital partner that this mandate requires.
These are practitioners who have resolved the same problem elsewhere, engaged for precisely as long as the work requires, under a single point of accountability. Maman remains personally involved from the first conversation through to handover, and the senior judgment remains with him throughout — it is what clients are retaining.
Agronomists & cultivation leads
Plant geneticists & breeders
Regulatory & licensing counsel
Processing & extraction engineers
Logistics & cross-border trade
Capital partners & analysts
04 Where the work happens
The work is conducted in the field
Licensed cultivation in the Andean corridor, grower programs across Latin America, and field programs conducted under senior oversight, on site.
Andean corridor
Highland cultivation
Field programs
Generational farms
Genetics
Varieties bred to purpose
05 Seed to shelf
An agriculture practice first
Every vertical this plant supports begins in the ground. Maman's expertise runs the full length of that chain — from the genetics selected before planting through to the finished product on a shelf.
- 01GeneticsVarieties selected and bred for the ground, the climate and the end product.
- 02CultivationField systems, yield programs and the agronomy that makes a crop commercially serious.
- 03Harvest & processingDrying, extraction and the quality control that determines what the crop is worth.
- 04ProductFormulation, packaging and the route to market across every vertical below.
06 Range
One plant, every vertical
Maman has built and supplied across the full breadth of the hemp and cannabis economy. That range is what allows an agronomic decision to be made with the end product already in view.
07 The record
A career of firsts
Each of these was a first. That is the pattern, and it is the reason the counsel is operational: he has already undertaken what he is advising you to undertake.
2009
Industry first
Birdsong Organics
Founded one of the first legal cannabis supply companies in the United States — a multi-level supply chain management service for licensed dispensaries in Colorado, at a point when the legal playbook for it was still being written.
2014
Industry first
Flora — multi-state cultivation, and a potency record
Built a turnkey cultivation and sales consulting practice operating across six states. Flora became the first company in the cannabis industry to achieve a verified 30%+ THCa concentration in flower, confirmed by lab testing in Massachusetts.
2016
Industry first
The UPS agreement — national hemp logistics
The first person to successfully negotiate with UPS to permit national shipment of hemp products across the United States. Before it, hemp businesses had no viable path to move product across state lines through a major carrier. That single agreement opened interstate commerce for the entire American hemp industry — and the infrastructure it created now moves billions of dollars of product a year.
2016
Derivatives USA
Reading the ceiling that state-by-state THC regulation imposed, he moved into hemp and CBD and built a supply business designed for a single national market.
2017
Industrial Hemp Partners — $50M in three years
Restructured Derivatives USA into IHP Holdings, LLC, supplying hemp biomass, CBD isolate, crude oil and THC-free distillate into an industry that badly needed quality-controlled material. The business generated $50 million in revenue in three years.
2021
Latin America — Bionoid Inc. and the Integrated Farmer Program
Founded Bionoid, a multinational hemp supply and service company operating across the United States, Canada and Latin America. Built the Integrated Farmer Program connecting smallholder growers to global supply chains, and ran a cannabis biomass production pilot with the Centro Ecuatoriano de Biotecnología y Ambiente (CEBA) — working directly with the ministries writing the country's first hemp regulations.
2022
Sector first
Atlantic Biomass — hemp into aviation fuel
Signed a $20 million Letter of Intent with Atlantic Biomass to produce commercial quantities of Sustainable Aviation Fuel from residual hemp biomass — sourcing up to 190,000 tons of annual residual biomass, with Atlantic Biomass’s academic partners at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, The Ohio State University and Hood College developing the low-GHG jet fuel.
Today
HemPower Biofuel
Founder of HemPower Biofuel, growing industrial hemp on generational family farms and pressing it into pellets that displace coal and wood in industrial boilers. The thesis has always been the same: hemp as a multi-vertical global commodity, from pharmaceuticals to fuel.
08 Who he works with
Four constituencies, one recurring question
The sectors differ. One question governs every engagement: how is a thing done for the first time — and done to the highest standard, at the lowest cost, entirely within the law? Maman has answered it repeatedly, and the categories he entered first now run on the standards he set.
Farms, processors and CPG brands
You hold licenses and acreage, and the operating numbers have room to improve — yield, quality, consistency, cost per pound, or a processing step carrying avoidable cost.
Typical engagementCultivation system review, genetics selection, quality program, and a supply chain that can actually deliver on spec.
Funds, acquirers and companies entering the sector
You are evaluating an asset, a management team or a market, and require an assessment from someone who has operated at that level. Or you hold a position with value still to be realized.
Typical engagementCommercial and operational diligence, management assessment, turnaround plan, and board-level advisory through execution.
Ministries, agencies and licensing bodies
You are establishing a hemp or cannabis framework and intend it to produce a functioning industry. This is work Maman has undertaken at national level.
Typical engagementRegulatory design input, licensing framework review, grower programs, and the investment case for making the sector viable.
Companies with product, ready for distribution
The product is strong and the commercial performance has room to match it. You require buyers, distribution, offtake agreements — and an advisor already known to the people who sign them.
Typical engagementPipeline build, distribution strategy, key account introductions, pricing, and negotiated offtake.
09 Approach
How engagements run
A single conversation establishes whether he can help. The diagnostic is deliberately brief, as the value resides in the conclusion.
Step 1
Conversation
Thirty minutes with Maman directly. You set out the problem; he gives you a candid assessment of whether it is one he has resolved before, and what it would require.
Step 2
Diagnostic
A focused assessment of the operation, the numbers and the binding constraint, conducted on site where that matters. Measured in weeks.
Step 3
Build
The team is assembled and the plan executed: systems installed, agreements negotiated, licenses filed, buyers brought to the table.
Step 4
Handover
Your team assumes the work and operates it independently. Retained advisory thereafter where you want it; the objective is a team that owns the capability outright.
Start here
Request a consultation
Set out what you are building. The initial conversation runs thirty minutes at no charge; bring the substantive problem and you will receive a candid assessment of whether it can be resolved.
Emailariel@hpbiofuel.com
Phone508 · 332 · 2629
BasedUnited States
WorkingNorth & South America, Europe, China, Central Asia and beyond