Puslinch pot laboratory is fuelled by 6,000 fish
Green Relief is the only licensed producer using aquaponics
PUSLINCH — Six thousand tilapia fish are swimming around in tanks in an underground laboratory buried in the hills of Puslinch, pampered and cared for by a team of scientists in white labcoats.
Every aspect of their comfort is closely monitored, from the water temperature to their specialized feed. They’re raised in a multimillion-dollar Green Relief facility with impenetrable security — all so they can be given away to local food banks.
Why? Because Green Relief isn’t interested in selling the fish. It’s using their waste to fertilize a different kind of cash crop — medicinal marijuana.
People laughed at us when we were going around trying to find this industry out. They said you can’t grow cannabis aquaponically. They said it’s impossible.
— Warren Bravo, CEO and co-founder of Green Relief
“We want happy and healthy fish, because if they’re happy, well-fed and content with the water quality, they grow, they swim and they create good, solid waste,” explains Warren Bravo, CEO and co-founder of Green Relief, which received its federal licence to sell medicinal marijuana last year.
Bravo’s cutting-edge cannabis factory is tucked out of sight, built into a hill off a rural concession with no signs to draw attention. Only the bank of ventilation shafts sticking out of the ground, and the tall barbed-wire fence, give it away.
Scared off by upfront capital and research costs, no other federally licensed producer in Canada has bothered to try using aquaponics — combining the principles of aquaculture and hydroponics — to grow medicinal marijuana. In fact, Green Relief says it’s the only licensed producer in the world to make cannabis this way.
“People laughed at us when we were going around trying to find this industry out. They said you can’t grow cannabis aquaponically. They said it’s impossible,” said Bravo, a former construction contractor.
Today, the technology allows him to reproduce cannabis at exactly the same price point and quality, whether it’s January or July outside, and with no extra inputs such as fertilizer or pesticides. He says it’s more sustainable, better for the environment and efficient to run.
The 30,000square-foot facility, spread over four growing rooms and a nursery, uses less water than a backyard family pool because it’s a closed-loop system that recycles the water. The plants float on large Styrofoam pads, with their roots extending down into water, and are grown using special lighting technology developed at the University of Guelph.
Bravo says this allows him to get 20 to 30 per cent more production out of his plants than conventional methods.
“I tell the plants what I want them to do,” Bravo said. “I manipulate the plants into thinking they’re going through an entire growing season, but in a much shorter time frame.”
Green Relief ’s operation produces about 2,700 kilograms of dried cannabis annually, but there are ambitious expansion plans on the horizon. He points to an empty field across from the company’s parking lot, where in February it will begin construction on a $50-million, 210,000-square-foot facility capable of producing 45,000 kilograms a year.
He said that once that facility is up and running, its two acres of growing rooms will be equivalent to 60 acres of greenhouses. That will make Green Relief one of the largest medicinal marijuana producers in the country, according to Bravo.
Funded by private investors to the tune of about $15 million, Green Relief ’s operation employs 35 people; they have backgrounds in plant biology, aquaculture, engineering and chemistry. Green Leaf is planning to become a publicly traded company in the new year.
“This is the next level. We’re taking the ‘wizard-unicorn’ factor that’s been in the cannabis industry, and the stigma, out of it. This is a science-based operation. We’re making medicine for patients,” Bravo said.
The company uses tilapia because they’re a hardy, disease-resistant species that thrive in warm water, which the cannabis plants need. Every five weeks, about 350 adult fish are donated to the Second Harvest food bank, which offers both favourable publicity and tax benefits for Green Relief.
The fish waste is converted into plant nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium through a patented filtration system. Aquaponics is a growing method that dates back to the ancient Incas, but has only recently been adapted for commercial uses.
“This is like any natural ecosystem, like a pond or a lake, that grows plants. We’ve just commercialized that system,” he said. “We spent a lot of time trying to get this to happen. Now that we’ve got it figured out, nobody grows cannabis as efficiently or well or cleanly as we do.”
Bravo is such a believer in aquaponics that he’s purchased the North American rights to the system for cannabis, and the Canadian rights to the system for vegetables, from Nelson and Pade, Inc., the Wisconsinbased company that invented the process.
He’s in the process of setting up satellite operations around the continent, from Fogo Island in Newfoundland to British Columbia.
Bravo also is eyeing the natural health product market in U.S. states where marijuana is legal. That’s why he recently bought a refining system that extracts oil and wax from raw cannabis so it can be turned into power and put into a range of things, from skin creams to supplements.
Green Relief ships directly to its customers, who need a doctor’s prescription for medical marijuana to order. There’s no sales from the facility, so there’s little traffic coming and going — except for the parade of investors looking for the next big thing in Canada’s commercial cannabis sector.
That’s exactly the way Bravo wants to keep it. Most people drive right by the underground pot factory without even noticing it.
“People who need to find this facility know it’s here,” he said. “But we’re not here to advertise ourselves. We want to blend into the community.”