POT PRODUCER READY TO EXPAND INTO SALES
BlissCo CEO says the future of cannabis is value-added products, not smoking
Shawn McDougall moves around inside the vault with a blue bucket full of dried cannabis and pauses so each visitor can get a whiff of the aroma.
This type of cannabis is called Shark Shock, says the production manager of BlissCo Cannabis, a cannabis grower and processor in Langley. “This is one of the strains that has a lot of value for us.”
The company opened its 12,000-square-foot production facility on Oct. 30 for a media tour.
BlissCo is ramping up production as it is set to join the ranks of roughly 130 licensed cannabis producers in Canada, but it does so amid uncertainty in the infant legalized market — overall demand is unknown, distribution networks are patchy and the number of legal competitors could skyrocket.
The tour included visits to BlissCo’s grow and harvest rooms, its oil extraction lab and its 900-squarefoot vault, in which the dried cannabis flower will be sorted, packaged, labelled and stored.
“These walls are about eight inches thick,” said Damian Kettlewell, BlissCo’s CEO. He’s standing just outside the vault, inside a secondary green metal cage that envelopes the grey safe room. A staffer opens the massive steel vault door and the tour members move inside.
Kettlewell said they bought the concrete and steel vault in August 2017 after it served as the cash transfer station for HSBC in downtown Vancouver.
Currently licensed to run a growing and processing business, the company is hoping to secure their sales licence from Health Canada this month, Kettlewell told Postmedia after the tour. “It’s a sevento 20-month process to earn your sales licence,” he said. “It’s a full-on intensive process.”
He said their business plan is to provide dried cannabis directly to medical patients, but they are also preparing to get into the recreational market in the form of “valued-added” products like pre-rolled joints, edibles and oils after those become legal, possibly in 2019, he said.
The company is also pursuing an export business to Europe.
BlissCo has eight full-time staff and six contractors, Kettlewell said. If business goes well, they could ramp up to 35 workers at this site.
BlissCo plans to process about 2,300 kilograms of cannabis in its first year of sales. They will be able to grow only about 300 kg of that supply because of space restrictions. The balance they are purchasing from the Supreme Cannabis Company and the GreenSeal Cannabis Company from Ontario, Kettlewell said.
He said those 2,300 kg will be sold in some form for between $7.50 and $10 per gram. BlissCo is in discussions with the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch to sell their recreational products, and expect an order shortly after they are granted their sales licence.
There are 132 producers licensed in Canada, but Kettlewell said Health Canada has not indicated how many producers will eventually be in the market.
“There will be hundreds more within a number of years for sure,” he said, acknowledging that they’re planning a business without knowing how many competitors they’ll face.
The solution is to establish a strong brand in the marketplace while building up strong relationships with medical patients, he said.
“(We’re) scaling up from a zerorevenue company to a multimillion dollar company within one year,” he said. “(That) is probably our biggest challenge, but I wouldn’t call it a problem.”
McDougall leads the tour. Everyone wears white lab coats over their clothes, hair nets and blue booties over their shoes. To pass into the main operations area, everyone must walk through a shallow chemical bath.
McDougall stops outside a windowed room that holds hundreds of plants in the “vegetation” phase. They have no flowers or buds, and stand less than 14 inches high.
“At this stage of the plant’s life, we’re just trying to get it big enough to the point where we want to start flowering it,” he said.
Next is the flowering room. McDougall opens the door so everyone can sniff the warm, humid air. These plants are about two feet high and are loaded with buds.
This room holds 603 plants, including strains known as Shark Shock and Critical Plus. BlissCo’s harvest was planned for Oct. 31. It was their second harvest following their initial crop, which was picked on Aug. 27 of this year.
After the visit to the vault, McDougall proudly shows off BlissCo’s $250,000 oil extraction machine in the lab. The machine, which looks like a stainless-steel beer keg cabinet, separates crude oil and terpenes from the cannabis using carbon dioxide, McDougall explains.
Terpenes are aromatic oils found in all plants. It’s believed there are at least 100 various types produced by cannabis, but McDougall says legalization will advance the study and understanding of cannabis terpenes. He holds up a small glass container with about a half-inch of clear fluid. People take turns sniffing the pungent terpenes.
McDougall then holds up a larger container with a yellow sappy-like “crude oil,” which includes the lipids extracted from the cannabis. Once refined, the oil can be used in vape pens, edibles and other products.
“The future of cannabis isn’t smoking it,” McDougall said. “And that’s what everybody is navigating towards trying to understand.”