‘The future of cannabis production’
Niagara was the perfect place to invest $40 million to convert an old flower-growing greenhouse in Pelham into the first facility of its kind in Canada’s emerging cannabis industry.
“It’s great growing environment, tremendous people out here working in the agricultural industry, colleges that want to support cannabis education, and we were able to buy the land at the right price and do this kind of thing here,” said Eric Paul, chief executive officer of CannTrust Holdings Inc.
“There’s a lot of opportunities to stay in this area, and it’s well located geographically to all the major markets and to transportation hubs,” he said Tuesday as the pharmaceutical company unveiled its new 40,500-squaremetre hydroponic cannabis production greenhouse at 1396 Balfour St.
The company’s vice-president of production and quality, Michael Ravensdale, said the novelty of the newly revamped facility is that it’s being operated as a perpetual harvest greenhouse, making it “the largest operation in the world that does that sort of production scheduling.”
By harvesting cannabis 365 days a year, Ravensdale said the company also provides steady employment for its nearly 200 workers, and expects to increase that number to more than 250 by the end of the summer.
The system also increases production capacity at the greenhouses.
“This is what we believe is the future of cannabis production,” Ravensdale said, while leading a tour of the spotless, climatecontrolled facility. “We say that because our productivity is about five times that of our competitors per square foot.”
The company has also started work on a 54,000-square-metre expansion to the facility, to double production to more than 100,000 kilograms of cannabis products annually.
Paul said the new greenhouse — complete with a natural gas co-generation system to reduce energy costs — helps the company reduce production expenses, which is vital if the government hopes to compete with the black market.
For instance, he said, it costs less than 75 cents to produce a gram of cannabis at CannTrust’s new greenhouses, compared to about $2 per gram at many indoor facilities.
The price difference inspired CannTrust to convert its indoor production facility in Vaughan — it was “one of the finest ones in the country” — into a manufacturing and packaging facility for the cannabis grown and dried in Pelham, Paul added.
“The only way you can bring your cost down is to go to scale enterprises like this.”
He expects Health Canada to announce legislation this week that would allow marijuana to be grown outdoors — which could reduce the cost of growing the plant to as little as 25 cents per gram.
And Niagara has a lot of opportunities to take advantage of that changing legislation, too.
If and when that legislation is approved, Paul said the company
plans to “offer more employment to farmers who have land who can contract grow for us.”
“We’re going to help their facility get licensed, put the fence and security and all those things to meet regulations, and give them our genetics and our quality control and make sure they can produce a cash crop for us. They will do well financially by doing that for us,” he said. “We hope to add more jobs in the general community with all the wonderful acreage and the good climate you have out here for growing.”
After decades of manufacturing job losses throughout the region, Welland-Pelham Chamber of Commerce executive director Dolores Fabiano welcomed the emerging industry.
“For years we’ve been saying it’s so rare to land a company who is just going to create 200 to 250 new jobs. And here we are in Pelham. It’s exciting,” Fabiano said.