Cannabis R&D facility started
Ground broken for Flowr Corp. centre at Kelowna’s border with Lake Country
Fittingly, the sweet smell of marijuana wafted in the air as Flowr Corporation broke ground Thursday for a first-of-its-kind cannabis research and development facility at Kelowna’s northern boundary with Lake Country.
No one was smoking a joint at the ceremony, although everyone was in a jubilant mood.
The distinctive odour of pot was coming from next door, the 85,000square-foot warehouse where Flowr is already growing product.
“Absolutely, this site is turning into a legal cannabis campus,” said Flowr CEO Vinay Tolia, who came from Toronto for the groundbreaking.
Publicly traded Flowr bought the property on McCarthy Road with the warehouse already on it.
It’s been retrofitted and is at 20 per cent capacity growing cannabis hydroponically (without soil, using a mineral nutrient solution in water).
“We just shipped our first product (cannabis flowers) to B.C., Ontario and Nova Scotia this week,” said Tolia.
“Hydroponic cannabis is very different from greenhouse- and outdoor-grown product. Our premium, hydroponic product tastes better and smells better.”
When up to full capacity, the hydroponic crop will be about 12,000 kilograms a year and workers will be added to the 100 employees already there.
Thursday’s groundbreaking was for the 50,000-square-foot research and development facility adjacent to the growing warehouse.
The R&D operation is a partnership with Hawthorne Canada, a subsidiary of the plant-science and fertilizer company Scotts MiracleGro.
Hawthorne is already a big supplier to the legal marijuana industry and will get even bigger as more production facilities and stores come on stream after the Oct. 17 legalization of recreational pot for adults.
Hawthorne and Flowr’s R&D facility will be the first such purpose-built operation in North America dedicated to cannabis innovation.
Genetics testing will be done there, along with grow rooms and greenhouses to test new methods and offices.
The building is expected to be complete in June.
Flowr also bought 16 hectares of land across the street for outdoor cannabis growing, cannabis nursery and greenhouses.
“This is all super exciting,” said Tolia.
“B.C. and the Okanagan are the stuff of lore in cannabis culture for high-quality product. Now that it’s becoming legal, all the talent that worked in the illegal trade is moving to the legal side.”
Tolia is a former hedge fund manager from New York who saw the potential in legal pot in Canada and became a founding investor and adviser to Flowr.
Three months ago, he moved to Toronto to become Flowr’s CEO.
Flowr decided to make Kelowna its corporate, R&D and production headquarters because Flowr cofounder and president Tom Flow moved here from Toronto four years ago and loved it.
Kelowna has been identified as a legal cannabis hot spot by ReMax Commercial Realty.
Flowr will be a big part of that with its R&D and production, which is going to government and private legal pot stores across the country.
Two other production companies — Doja and THC BioMed — call Kelowna home and will supply legal pot stores, both public and private, across the province.
Kelowna has no legal pot stores yet but is expected to get about 20.
Kelowna is also home to Vitalis Extraction Technology, which designs, manufactures and installs the equipment that uses high-pressure carbon dioxide to turn cannabis into essential oils used in numerous pot products.