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UTRECHT, The Netherlands (AFP) - Filled with men in business suits on mobile phones and featuring seminars on credit sales and production relocation, the international hemp fair has left behind its hippie image.

Some 16,000 visitors were expected between Friday and Sunday at the 8th Highlife Hemp Fair - a mix between a motor show and an agricultural exhibition with even bikini-clad women distributing company prospectuses.

However, any visitor spending some time at the show eventually knows what it means to be a "passive smoker".

Hemp is a plant which can be used to make rope and rough cloth but also the drug cannabis.

With 120 stands hired at 150 euros (194 dollars) per square metre, spread over 12,000 metres (130,000 square feet) in the Utrecht Exhibition Centre and equipped with high-speed Internet access, the hemp fair reflects the changed nature of an industry which has become of one the new growth areas of the Dutch economy.

The hemp industry has an estimated turnover of between five to 10 billion euros (6.4 to 13 billion dollars) per year, or one to two percent of Dutch GDP, way in front of the high profile tulip and cut flower industry.

However some visitors are nostalgic for the old style hemp fairs.

"Eight years ago in Nijmegen, we had tressel tables, it was like a market," said Andre Beckers, responsible for communication at the hemp fair.

"It was more fun", admitted a 40-year-old who is a lawyer specialised in the rights of "coffee shops", the cafes in the Netherlands which are allowed to sell limited amounts of cannabis.

Like a number of exhibitors and visitors, the organiser of the fair, Boy Ramsahai, wears a stripped suit and is never off his mobile phone.

He is the head of a commercial empire which began with the Dutch magazine "Highlife", created about 15 years ago and devoted to cannabis culture. He also publishes "Soft Secret" a free magazine published in French, English and Spanish.

Some of the exhibitors have to walk a fine line with national laws which prohibit the growing of hemp.

"In the United States, 40 percent of our buyers grow cannabis and 60 percent orchids or aromatic plants. In Canada it's the reverse," said Byron Sheppard, who came from British Columbia in Canada to present his fully automated plant boxes for indoor production.

"When we participate in these exhibitions in the United States, obviously we put flowers in our boxes. But the connoisseurs know that you can grow other things apart from roses and tomatoes," Sheppard said.

The Dutch, which have a long tradition of crossbreeding plants and production in greenhouses, are now focussed on the improvement of seeds. But local production of hemp was banned seven years ago and is now undertaken in Switzerland, Spain or Africa.

Officially, the Dutch businesses only import and export the seeds and make the production materials - dryers, machines to roll joints (cannabis cigarettes), watering and filtration systems, which are sold all over the world.

However for the amateurs, who have come from around the world, this year's hemp fair may be a disappointment: the distribution of free samples has been banned after the mayor of Utrecht threatened to close down the fair.

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