News » Oakland’s 60,000 Square Foot Marijuana Factory





Non-profit Gropech wants to build what would be the first medical marijuana factory in the United States. The proposal calls for a 60,000 square foot facility that will house up to 30,000 marijuana plants and produce nearly $50 million per year of the medicine. Additionally the facility would create hundreds of union jobs, and reinvest significant capital back in to the Bay Area.

According to the co-founder of Gropech Derek Peterson, “the laws in California were sort of backward because they addressed retail sales before wholesale production. It would be like if you built a bunch of liquor stores, and only afterward built distilleries.” To solve this problem, he wants to bring capitalism to the medical marijuana world using the old adage that “bigger is better.”

Currently most cannabis produced in the state is done on small scale “farms”, or in people’s houses and basements. By operating in a large scale facility, Gropech hopes to bring transparency to the production of marijuana with the hope that better regulation will lead to safer medicine.

As with any large scale facility, especially one that produces marijuana, steps are being taken to address energy usage, cleanliness, fires, and security.

See a virtual video of the proposed facility below.

Read more at http://www.gropech.com/

[source The Atlantic]

Tags: California, factory, Gropech, grow, Oakland, teamsters, union