The company Kenactiv prob had more regulations to too laws being stricter while now it's becoming mainstream.
What regulations? Kenaf is 100% legal to grow and process.
Kenactiv Innovations (once known as Biotech Mills) was making the same kenaf-based products that HEMP claims that it will be profitably making at the new location: kenaf fiber, SpillSuck and DrillWall.
Kenactiv had been making those products since 2008 or 2009, using the plant they bought from Alliance Tobacco after it built and ran the plant for several years (the facility was built to enable farmers to process a new crop, kenaf, to hopefully replace lost tobacco-growing revenues).
The following post of mine from Jan, 2015 has more detail:
IIRC, Kenactiv lost $10M in 2012 and $4M in 2013 before going bankrupt.
As to the decorticator probably being broken before the bankruptcy, that's a conclusion based on the available evidence, which seems to indicate that there has been no progress made on the decorticator section in months.
In July, 2016, a guy posted a short video of his tour of HEMP's plant. I noticed a lack of progress in the wiring of the decorticator section by comparing the video to an image of the same piece of equipment that Hemp posted in Oct, 2015. Ten months, no progress.