The cannabis crops cops won’t touch

A PARTNERSHIP of ASXlisted companies is looking to legally grow cannabis in an area frequently associated with illegal crops.

A fortnight after announcing it had bought a Southport botanicals processing plant for its budding pharmaceutical operation, The Hydroponics Company (THC) said it was looking to Northern New South Wales to become the new ground zero for legal cannabis production.

Under the agreement, which is subject to regulatory approvals, farms in the Bungawalbyn Valley Basin would grow cannabis to supply the Southport plant and also provide pollen for the nation’s first organic cannabis honey-producing bees.

THC has signed up with Alstonville-based farm operators Jenbrook and honeymakers Meluka Health, which is halfowned by ASX-listed Eve Investments and says the joint venture will allow them to supply patients and researchers in Australia and overseas.

Meluka already produces a hemp seed honey, a combination of hemp seeds and raw honey, however they have been looking for a partner for their plans to produce honey made by bees who’d harvested pollen from cannabis flowers.

Eve Investments investment director Ben Rohr said the properties of cannabis honey made by bees were not yet fully understood but that they could have therapeutic and recreational applications.

“When bees harvest from cannabis, they produce a honey that has the properties of cannabis,” he said.

“There could be an avenue for recreational usage, obviously not in Australia but in the US market. We’re not deliberately going out to get people high, we want to be considered a health food, all backed by research.”

The plantation would be created in greenhouses on the existing tea tree farm, next to oldgrowth tea tree thickets which have grown in the wetlands for 30,000 years and are already producing Meluka honey.

Mr Rohr was tight-lipped on how the cannabis bees would be encouraged to harvest from the cannabis plants, as opposed to ranging outside.

He said the plantation itself would benefit from pollination by the bees, which would increase the yields for processing in the Southport plant.

THC has incorporated another company, THC Pharma to run the operation, appointing Ken Charteris as executive director and pharmaceutical engineer Michael Harrison to lead the processing plant.