Pelham Canntrust facility ready to restart
Cannabis grower Canntrust will restart production at its 430,000-square-foot Niagara Perpetual Harvest Facility in Pelham, after its Health Canada license was recently reinstated.
In a release, the company said it had been working in collaboration with Health Canada for many months to identify and address regulatory deficiencies at its Balfour Road facility.
On Feb. 14, it completed remediation activities and documentation in support of license reinstatement was submitted to the federal government agency.
“At this time, the company cannot provide an exact time frame for when its products will be available in the market,” said the release, adding it’s dependent on reinstatement of its Vaughan processing facility licence.
The company’s licences to sell and grow cannabis and to sell to provincially authorized distributors or dealers, and registered patients, were suspended in September of last year.
In July 2019, Health Canada discovered cannabis was being grown in several unlicensed rooms at the Pelham facility before appropriate licences had been secured.
Health Canada inspectors seized more than 4,000 kilograms of “implicated product” and took samples for more testing.
More than 350 staff worked at the Pelham operation on Balfour Road at the time, and in October it destroyed $77 million worth of plants and inventory as part of a compliance plan.
The company said it remains without meaningful revenues and has terminated or laid-off a significant portion of its workforce. It said it will match production to opportunities it sees in the marketplace, and assess staffing requirements accordingly.
Canntrust will put into place extensive measures and precautions to ensure staff can work safely and are protected from COVID-19.
It said restarting operations in Pelham was an important first step to rebuilding stakeholder trust and delivering high-quality, innovative products to its patients and customers.
The company is also under a court order to undertake a sale and investment solicitation process, which is intended to solicit interest in, and opportunities for, a sale of or investment in all or part of its assets and business operations. A company release said it’s a two-phase process with a bid deadline for the first phase set for June 22.