Carleton Place firm OK’d as grower

A medical marijuana company in Carleton Place has received permission to start growing cannabis.

The cultivation licence for RockGarden Medicinals Inc. was approved Aug. 25. The company operates from a building in an industrial park. There are plans to add an addition and eventually employ 30 to 40 people in the town 53 kilometres southwest of Ottawa.

RockGarden becomes the third marijuana grower in the Ottawa area. Canopy Growth Corp., with headquarters in Smiths Falls, is Canada’s largest cannabis producer, and Hydropothecary in Gatineau is the only Quebec grower.

RockGarden applied for a licence in 2014 after the federal government adopted a program to allow private companies to grow medical marijuana.

Health Canada has recently picked up the pace in approving licences, hiring more staff and streamlining the process as the country prepares for the legalization of recreational marijuana. There are now 56 licensed growers across the country.

Like many of them, RockGarden has plans to enter the recreational market. The first crop will be planted in mid-September, with a harvest in early January 2018, said chief financial officer Wynand Stassen. The company was founded by Deborah Hanscom, an Ottawa lawyer, and her son Andrew Rock, a former production chief at the Tweed marijuana plant in Smiths Falls.