Kitchener cannabis producer cheers private sales

Storefront dispensaries have the knowledge and expertise to help customers, CEO says

KITCHENER — The head of Waterloo Region’s first licensed cannabis producer says the best people to sell pot to Ontarians are those who have already been doing it through storefront dispensaries.

Marijuana companies like Kitchener’s James E. Wagner Cultivation Corporation (JWC) are celebrating Ontario’s sudden shift toward privatizing marijuana sales once recreational pot becomes legal in October.

JWC, which recently struck a deal with Conestoga College to develop new cultivation technology, thinks it’s a good move to hand over sales to the dispensaries that have already been operating on the black market.

“I think it’s great news,” said Nathan Woodworth, president and CEO of JWC.

“It’s a good move, and I think it’s going to help people who are interested in purchasing recreational cannabis.”

While he thinks the now-scuttled Ontario Cannabis Store would have done a “fine job” of handling government-run marijuana sales, he’d prefer letting the free market sell his product.

“These people who are passionate about cannabis, who are already involved in running these private locations, I think it’s right to give them an opportunity,” Woodworth said.

“They’re experts in this field, and that sort of expertise is going to help people make an informed decision about the kinds of products they want to use.”

JWC, which has more than 50 employees, is building its second growing facility inside the former Lear Corp. automotive plant, which it hopes could pump out as much as 30,000 kilograms of marijuana by next year.

The deal with Conestoga, meanwhile, will partner JWC’s cultivation specialists with the college’s Applied Research and Innovation Office, he said.

The first stage will be focused on narrowing down the feasibility of a handful of potential technologies and trying to get government grants to fund that work, Woodworth said.

“We have high hopes for this,” he said.

Woodworth said he hopes the partnership could help produce new technology that allows growers like JWC to automate more of the steps in the cultivation process. It could also include virtualreality training for future cannabis industry employees.

“There’s a lot of ways that technology can be applied. There’s a huge variety of tasks that happen in our grow rooms that could be automated,” he said.