It’s the dream job for many, about to become a reality. Greg Bruce talks to the forces behind the new wave of medicinal cannabis production.
It’s the dream job for many, about to become a reality. Greg Bruce talks to the forces behind the new wave of medicinal cannabis production.
TVNZ’s Sunday programme last year aired a story about two of the as-yet non-existent medical cannabis industry’s leading players. Ruatoria-based Hikurangi Cannabis was represented primarily by one of its growers, a guy with a missing tooth, in hi-vis vest and gumboots, who had been in and out of prison for years and who had self-proclaimed high proficiency in cultivating the stickiest of sticky buds.
Auckland-based Helius was represented mostly by its CEO and public face, the telegenic, lightly bearded, ruffle-haired Paul Manning, who had just left a $500,000 a year job running a big-city advertising agency.
The Hikurangi grower danced in a field of cannabis plants, waving up at the drone filming him and smiling happily because Hikurangi — which will operate as a collective, with growers as part of a co-op — is giving him a chance to make a living from his skills.
Manning walked around an empty warehouse, where his company planned to grow its high-tech weed using a high-tech process that will make traditional growers largely redundant. The place was so enormous TVNZ flew a drone around in there, too.
One way of looking at this episode is as a battle for the soul of big marijuana: the social do gooders vs the rich pricks. Another way of looking at it is not like that at all.
Recently, I met Manning in a different building. He didn’t mention what had happened to the one they showed on TV but the new one is similarly massive and very flashy, situated behind a highly secure perimeter at the end of a cobbled street in East Tamaki. Pharmaceutical giant GMP has leased it to Helius for 20 years at a cost of $1.3 million a year. Manning says it comes with radar on the roof to prevent would-be weed burglars bursting through the awesome skylight above reception.
He co-founded Helius with two friends: Gavin Pook, who used to run Red Bull New Zealand; and J.P. Schmidt, who made his money in private equity and property. All are in their late 30s or early 40s. Their main investor is Guy Haddleton, who gave them $15m, a fairly trivial amount compared to the $380 million he’s worth according to the 2018 NBR rich list.
Their plan is to fill this warehouse with dozens of self-contained, computer-operated, automated, regulated grow rooms, full of hopefully danky and potentially stanky buds, produced in accordance with internationally recognised good manufacturing practice (GMP) guidelines. The fit-out alone, Manning says, will cost about $10 million and the grow room will be filled with an estimated 100,000 plants at any one time.
This will be laboratory cannabis, in which variables like nutrient load will be able to be adjusted remotely, grown under lights the spectrum of which can be altered, in rooms that are atmospherically controlled.
On the day I visited, the 5500sq m warehouse contained just one such room, as yet devoid of cannabis. The only other things in the warehouse were pallets and pallets of booze, including dozens of boxes of Baileys Irish Cream, the remnants of their sub-let to neighbours Lion, which has helped Helius pay its enormous rent while it hasn’t been making any money.
One way of looking at this is as metaphor: the handing over of the baton from one mindaltering, pleasure-delivery drug manufacturer giving way to another. Another way of looking at it is not like that at all.
“WEED”, “WACKY backy”, “maryjane”, “dak”, “bud”, “grass”, “herb”, “skunk”, “nugs”, “dat chronic”, “that sweet, sweet stanky danky”, “having a sesh”, “hitting that blunt”, “rolling a doob”. None of these terms I found on the internet were used by any of the interviewees in this story, which was disappointing because they’re great for search engine optimisation.
Given half the chance, all the interviewees would almost certainly use Microsoft Word’s “track changes” tool to strike out the previous paragraph in the brightest available shade of red. Several would probably use the “Add comments” tool to write “Delete.”
It’s hard to tell who, if any, of the major players has smoked a lot of marijuana. The closest any of them got to a discussion of