Antigonish Co. operation licensed to grow marijuana

Long-term aim is local brand for Nova Scotia sales

Up an Antigonish County woods road, Frank MacMaster’s surroundings were modest on Wednesday.

But the camp where he’s spending the winter was warm courtesy of a fire going in the woodstove and there was a microwave with which to make a visitor tea.

Most importantly, there was a dream that appears to be about to bear significant fruit.

Because MacMaster is the president of THC Inc. and his former abattoir up the ice-covered dirt road in the Ohio Valley will be growing marijuana by the end of January.

“I went all in,” said MacMaster. On Dec. 1, THC INC., of which MacMaster is president, became the second operation in the province to be granted a licence by Health Canada to grow marijuana. Breathing Green Solutions became the first in November when Health Canada approved it to start growing marijuana at its Wentworth facility.

MacMaster estimates THC’s 6,500-square-foot facility will be able to grow 500,000 to 700,000 grams of marijuana annually.

With projections pointing to marijuana retailing at about $10 a gram when it becomes legal in July, MacMaster’s fortunes will likely soon improve.

But he travelled a long and uncertain road to get to where he now stands.

An industrial electrician, MacMaster was working at mines in the Northwest Territories when he built the abattoir back in Antigonish County as a means of making a job for himself at home in Antigonish County.

“I wanted to be closer to my family and be able to see my daughter grow up but I found I was working 24/7,” said MacMaster.

So in 2013 her shut the abattoir down and returned to his previous trade.

But before he went north again he filed an application with Health Canada to grow medical marijuana for research and development.

“There wasn’t even a commercial production class then,” said MacMaster.

“I was looking for a use for the building.”

That put him near the front of a line that would only later become a very valuable position to be in.

In 2014, MacMaster’s licence application was transferred over to Health Canada’s new licensing class for commercial medical marijuana producers.

Venture capital began flooding into the growth industry while Health Canada moved slowly on granting licences.

To do the necessary work on his building, MacMaster teamed up with Matica Enterprises Ltd. of British Columbia – exchanging 50 per cent of the shares in his company for $325,000 and shares in Matica.

That deal went south when Matica sued MacMaster in 2015, claiming he diverted investment funds away from the contracted plan to establish a marijuana growing facility.

MacMaster denied the allegations.

Then in May a B.C. company specializing in green renewable power stepped in and bought out both Matica and MacMaster.

Cultivator Catalyst Corp. paid Matica with $700,000 of its own shares and bought out MacMaster in similar fashion.

So MacMaster now has a partial ownership stake in Cultivator Catalyst Corp., which owns his former company THC Inc. He remains president of THC Inc.

Cultivator Catalyst Corp. appears to dream as big as MacMaster does.

“We’ve got 19 acres (on MacMaster’s former farm) to play with so we could easily plunk down a 100,000 square foot facility,” said Khurram Malik, acting president of Cultivator Catalyst, on Wednesday.