Sundial Growers employing Alberta-based builder
With recreational cannabis legalization expected later this year, an Alberta-based pot producer is using some homegrown technological advancements for its planned 70,000-square-foot growing facility.
The team at Sundial Growers of Olds, about 95 kilometres north of Calgary, has teamed up with Alberta construction company Modus Structures to design massive modular buildings specifically designed for the cultivation of cannabis.
The units, called Sundial Cannabis Cultivation Modules, are made from inorganic materials that resist cannabis-killing conditions like mould and moisture.
Sundial CEO Torsten Kuenzlen said the controlled environment will allow the company to produce “pharmaceutical grade” cannabis that has “the same effect, every time.”
“We started with a traditional build facility … but as we were scaling up we were looking for the ability to create a grow environment that was incredibly consistent,” Kuenzlen said. “We wanted to ensure we could create a form of construct that would have literally identical growing conditions.”
Forty pods, each 24 feet by 60 feet, will be shipped from Modus’ facility in Crossfield, about 50 kilometres south of Sundial’s facility in Olds, to create 140 grow rooms capable of producing 100 million grams of dry cannabis.
Kuenzlen said the pods are state of the art but wouldn’t reveal the cost for each module or what materials are used in their construction, saying only that the pods are ideal “because they don’t let spores latch on to walls or ceilings or floors.”
Sundial plans to have the facility up and running by 2019, which will also be able to process more than 30 million grams of cannabis extracts each year.
Kuenzlen said the company will supply both medical users and the recreational market once the federal government makes personal use legal later this year.
The federal government has said extracts will not be available for recreational use in the first year of legalization, but Kuenzlen said Sundial plans to hit the market with consumable cannabis products once they get government approval.
Kuenzlen said the pods have huge potential for the company to expand its operations beyond the Olds facility, adding the company ’s products will “ultimately serve the international market.”