NSW Government Releases Hemp Industry Development Plan: Here’s What It Means for Growers

The NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) has just released its NSW Hemp Industry Development Plan, setting out the state’s strategy for growing hemp from a promising sideline into a mainstream agricultural industry. It’s the first time the state government has put a clear, public roadmap around hemp’s future, and it’s worth a close read for anyone growing, processing, or investing in the sector.

dpird.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/broadacre-crops/nsw-hemp-industry

NSW is already the country’s hemp leader, but there’s a catch

The numbers in the plan confirm what many in the industry already suspected: NSW has held the largest area under hemp cultivation of any Australian state or territory for three years running. As of 30 June 2025, the state had:

• 172 hemp industry licences
• 244 licensed facilities
• 19,306 hectares of approved harvest area
• But only 1,088 hectares actually under crop production

That last figure is the one to sit with. NSW has approved nearly 18,000 more hectares than growers are actually planting. The bottleneck clearly isn’t licensing or approved land, it’s everything that happens after the crop comes out of the ground: processing capacity, market certainty, and a clear path to a buyer.

The plan does show some momentum, with 22 new licences approved and 15 renewed for a further five years in the 2024/25 financial year.

The big-picture goal

DPIRD’s vision statement frames hemp as a future mainstream crop — a sustainable input into NSW’s low-carbon, circular economy, rather than a niche or novelty product. AgriFutures Australia’s modelling, cited in the plan, suggests the national hemp industry could be worth $100 million by 2032 under the right conditions. NSW clearly wants to be the state that gets the conditions right first.

Four objectives DPIRD says will drive growth

The plan organises its strategy around four “industry development objectives.” Stripped of the policy language, they boil down to:

1. Better crop guidance for growers — giving primary producers the information and best-practice guides to choose varieties suited to their conditions, lifting yield and quality.
2. More processing infrastructure, closer to where hemp is grown — recognising that value-adding capacity needs to be accessible across production regions, not concentrated in one place.
3. Stronger consumer confidence in hemp products — through product standards, quality assurance, and evidence-based information to back up market claims.
4. A regulatory environment that keeps pace — balancing flexibility for innovation against community and stakeholder expectations.

What DPIRD is actually committing to do

Beyond the broad objectives, the plan lists concrete actions across four themes, though it’s worth noting most carry soft language (“we will consider,” “we will explore”) rather than hard deadlines.

The two actions with the clearest commitments are:

• Amending the Hemp Industry Act 2008 and Hemp Industry Regulation 2016 — DPIRD says it will progress legislative amendments, starting with the Regulation.
• Continuing the Australian Industrial Hemp Program of Research, due to deliver in 2028.

Elsewhere, DPIRD commits to:

• Reviewing and updating licensing and regulatory guidance on the NSW Government website
• Publishing and maintaining public data and reporting on low-THC hemp production
• Releasing an Investment Prospectus to promote the competitive advantages of growing hemp in NSW and attract private investment
• Undertaking a market opportunity assessment to guide growers’ and businesses’ decisions
• Working to support Aboriginal businesses entering the industry
• Engaging with national regulators and other states to push for more consistent hemp regulation across Australia

Why this matters for growers and processors

If you’re already in the industry, the headline takeaway is this: government is naming processing infrastructure and market pathways as the priority gaps, which lines up with what the production numbers show. The Investment Prospectus and market opportunity assessment are the two things to watch for, since they’re the actions most likely to translate into real capital flowing into regional processing capacity.

The flip side is that this is a plan, not a funding announcement or a piece of finalised legislation. Most of what’s listed is direction-setting rather than locked-in delivery, and the only hard date in the whole document is 2028, for the research program. Whether the regulatory amendments and the prospectus land quickly — or slip into the same “we will consider” territory as the rest of the document — will say a lot about how seriously this gets followed through.

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Read the full NSW Hemp Industry Development Plan on the DPIRD website.