A Manitoba-based cannabis company is preparing to be listed on the TSX Venture Exchange.

Delta 9 Bio-Tech, a federally-approved producer of medical marijuana, expects to be listed publicly by the end of the week.

CEO John Arbuthnot calls it a milestone for the company as it looks to expand and position itself for the legalization of cannabis.

“Really the strategy for us has been to alleviate the issue of access to capital,” said Arbuthnot. “We knew we would need to raise substantial amounts of capital to expand our business not only the next few years in the medical market but also looking forward to the potential for recreational cannabis next summer.”

Delta 9, which is licensed by Health Canada to grow cannabis for medical use, currently serves 2200 patients.

“We’ve seen an exponential expansion in the number of patients accessing medical cannabis over the last number of years.”

“We’ve certainly demonstrated that our products are produced profitably and can be sold at a profit,” said Arbuthnot. “The challenge for us now is to scale production to a point where we are cash flow positive from operations and that’s the point of a lot of cannabis companies right now.”

Rob Tétrault, vice-president and portfolio manager at National Bank Financial, said investors are keen to get in on cannabis.

“We’re getting phone calls from all sorts of investors,” said Tétrault. “There’s a ton of interest and people will want to know how they can get in.”

Tétrault said financial advisors will consider many different factors for clients interested in investing cannabis.

“There are a ton of companies right now that are in exploratory mode to become either licensed or on the TSX, or the TSX Venture,” said Tétrault. “These companies, you gotta look at how much capacity they have. Are they licensed already, do they have distribution, are they going to be able to produce, are they going to be able to expand.”

“At the end of the day Canadians can only smoke so much marijuana.”

Delta 9 is currently producing 1000 kilograms of cannabis annually, but Arbuthnot said the company is looking to ramp up production to 17,000 kilograms a year by the end of 2019.

“Our expansion over the next few years will require capital investment in the area of $25-$30 million,” said Arbuthnot. “A lot of this expansion is just to accommodate the continuing demand that we’re seeing from the medical market.”

“Now of course the interesting part of the expansion is looking forward to the potential legalization of recreational cannabis next summer.”