N.S. company expands operations
HORTONVILLE, N.S. – Overlooking rolling hills and lowlying land near the flow of the Gaspereau River in Hortonville, Andrew Robinson watches construction plodding along.
“It’s a dream come true,” he said.
Robinson is president and master grower for Robinson’s Cannabis.
From an old house fronting a road that serves as a temporary base of operations, he watches as construction continues on the site of the Robinson’s Cannabis and Auxly Cannabis Group’s outdoor cultivation project. When completed, the 158acre Robinson’s Outdoor Grow (OG) will be considered unique in Nova Scotia. It will include two 20,000-sq.-ft. barns that will house offices, as well as processing and storage facilities for cannabis.
Although things are coming together quickly, rolling fields of cannabis to match the worldclass vineyards and orchards of the Annapolis Valley will be a bit longer in the making. The company intends to start small in the 2020 growing season, with a 20-acre “proof-of-concept” crop in the operation’s first phase.
Robinson’s OG is expected to yield 200 kilograms of cannabis per acre.
“We’ll iron out the details, get our processes down, and in the next year, expand from there. We’ll use that as a launch point,” Robinson said.
When everything is in the right place and growing can begin, there will be local employment opportunities.
Robinson’s employs 70 people at its facility in Kentville’s industrial park. By January, Robinson hopes to hire around 30 more. By the time the 2020 growing season begins, he wants to have at least 40 people working at the new site.
“We’re hiring steadily,” he said.
In addition to jobs in the cannabis industry, the work taking place in Hortonville has provided employment to about 50 people.
Between fencing, plumbing, mechanical and engineering work, there is lots to do before the cannabis starts growing.
Robinson said the fact the fields in Hortonville will form a regulated outdoor grow site makes it a unique venture in Nova Scotia.
“We started with a dream, and then, when the regulations came into effect, we knew the dream was basically possible.”
Robinson immediately looked to the Annapolis Valley for the best place to grow cannabis, taking climate and other factors into consideration.
“I think this is the perfect site because it’s dead-centre, in the middle of the wine region. We hope, and think, this could be another tourist attraction,” Robinson said.
“We looked at different places that have an ideal climate and the factors we wanted, and we lucked upon this one by word of mouth, by just knocking on doors,” he later added.
The property is a combination of five separate lots purchased from three different owners in the Hortonville area.
The fields, now fenced in, will be monitored on a 24-hour basis by a security system, one of many conditions the business needs to abide by to obtain a licence to operate.