A medicinal cannabis farm has been declared open for business in south-east Queensland, with the race on to supply the product to the Australian market.

Medifarm’s multimillion-dollar facility, in a top-secret location in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, has been officially opened by federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, who visited the site on Tuesday.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt surrounded by rows of cannabis. Darren England/AAP

Mr Hunt said Medifarm had been granted three of the 81 licences so far issued by the federal government to grow cannabis for medicinal purposes.

Medifarm had announced late last year it would produce medicinal cannabis commercially in the first half of 2019, but Mr Hunt said regulations had slowed the process.

“The office of drug control has responsibility for that and they are very, very assiduous and one of the things everybody would want is for us to operate in an efficient way but in a safe way,” he said.

“It is a highly regulated sector and we make no apologies for that, but it’s about ensuring that if the doctors determine the medicine should be available, it can be available.”

Medifarm founder Adam Benjamin said he was not worried about the delay, but admitted there was a lot of competition in the market as more companies entered the fledgling sector.

“We are a proud frontrunner in this space,” Mr Benjamin said.

“As for the other 78 licences, good on them, people often ask is it competitive, well, if you can be in the race to supply life-changing medicine to Aussie patients, what an amazing race.”

Mr Benjamin said they would be supplying products to local doctors before the end of the year.

“We have already two harvests out of the four or five growth cycles that can happen in a year,” he said.

“It’s very important to maintain supply in the future to patients that we build up our reserves, we have a huge amount that we’re building up so as we come to market our supply chain is continuous and the quality is continuous.”

Medifarm founding director Adam Benjamin. Darren England/AAP

Mr Benjamin said he founded the company after learning of the plight of eight-year-old Sam Martin, whose parents, Mark and Tanya, fought to have their son put on medicinal cannabis to ease the pain of late-stage aggressive cancer.

Mr Benjamin is a family friend of the Martins, who were on hand on Tuesday for Medifarm’s official opening.

Mark Martin said it was a big leap forward for patients.

“We’ve seen first-hand as a family what a massive benefit medicinal cannabis can have for patients in terms of pain management,” he said.

“When we started to give Sam medicinal cannabis in 2014 in the last phase of his life his general wellbeing improved massively.”

Testing of medicinal cannabis has not been as thorough as other types of pharmaceuticals as a result of the intense governmental regulation on the product, however preliminary trials have shown it to be effective as a pain reliever and to help lessen the effects of conditions such as epilepsy.

Medifarm has produced 1.2 tonnes of cannabis so far, with an annual capacity to provide medicine to about 3000 patients.

Up until now, Australian doctors could prescribe medicinal cannabis but had to source it from overseas, however Medifarm and a number of other facilities are either ready to begin local production or nearing that stage.

More than 12,000 prescriptions have been written for medicinal cannabis nation-wide since it was made legal by the federal government in 2016 and by most of the states and territories shortly after.

Medifarm has set itself up as a complete supply chain - growing and processing the cannabis itself, and then also producing the medicines from it for sale.

It has sourced its cannabis plants from Israel, which is further along in its medicinal cannabis industry, with the Sunshine Coast facility employing 40 people.