Open house at would-be pot plant,
C6
The company that wants to grow “high-quality prescription marijuana” in the one-time Hershey chocolate plant in Smiths Falls is inviting residents to drop by this weekend for an open house. And yes, snacks will be served. “Join us on Saturday to meet our team, learn about our work, and enjoy some light munchies,” Tweed Inc. says in a poster on its website.
The company is opening the doors to the sprawling factory even though it has yet to secure Health Canada approval to join a network of suppliers that will be the only legal source of medical marijuana when the current system of grow-your-own licences ends next April.
But Tweed is aware that its neighbours, even those without an appetite for the type of sweet confections Hershey cooked up in the plant before departing for Mexico, have great curiosity about its plans for the, er, joint.
” We just thought it would be a great idea to set up an open house on the weekend, nothing formal, but basically an opportunity for members of the community to drop by and put faces to names, meet us, ask us questions,” explains Mark Zekulin, Tweed’s general counsel and “vice-president of community engagement.”
The event could also serve to bolster support for Tweed’s application, although the firm, which plans to hire as many 100 people, already is enjoying strong support in an area that has seen a parade of job losses in the shuttering of the Hershey factory, a Stanley Tools plant and the Rideau Regional Centre for mentally disabled adults.
Leaders of the Rideau River community back the bid and Tweed has received “hundreds of emails” expressing support — and often asking about job prospects — since its plan became public in September, Zekulin says.
Headed by Ottawa technology entrepreneurs Chuck Rifici and Bruce Linton, Tweed will seek tenants to fill the two-thirds of the space it won’t occupy at the Hershey complex. In a September interview, Rifici, who also serves as a top adviser to federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, predicted Tweed could become “a $100-million-a-year operation.”
To get there, however, it will need a Health Canada OK that cannot come before early 2014, when Zekulin expects the plant will be ready for the regulator’s inspection. Health Canada has so far approved just three of the 248 applications made by wouldbe commercial producers up to Nov. 5, but says there is no limit on how many firms it will license.
Unlike Tweed, which in corporate name and public communications gives a nod to pop-culture references to marijuana, the three firms already approved — CanniMed of Saskatchewan, Mettrum Ltd. of Toronto and the Peace Naturals Project of Stayner, Ont., near Wasaga Beach — are restrained in describing their “agri-health” businesses.
Zekulin says Tweed’s slightly edgier strategy is intended to help it stand out, as well as to promote understanding of marijuana’s therapeutic value among those who view it only as a recreational drug.
“We say it’s fine to start with a joke ... but the goal is to bring the conversation back to that serious level, which is, this a market for a medicine that 30,000-plus people rely on, and more as the market grows.”
Saturday’s open house is from noon to 4:30 p.m. at the plant at 1 Hershey Dr. in Smiths Falls.