OrganiGram Holdings Inc (CVE:OGI) (OTCMKTS:OGRMF) (FRA:0OG) takes us behind the scenes and shows off their state-of-the-art, purpose-built cannabis growing operation. OrganiGram maximizes their space using a 3-tiered system, so that there are vertically 3 levels of growing going on; one on top of the other, in every room. They have also gone all-in with there mechanical and engineering side making sure that the conditions in every room are consistent and can be adjusted manually. We also get a glimpse into their recreational branding strategy and how it translates to the cannabis-production side of things.

TRANSCRIPT:

Matt Rogers, Director of Operations: So, I think a bit of the secret about what we’ve really been doing here, we started really focusing on our patients. Once you start to understand your patients and what they’re looking for, we can take that and apply it to our growth.

We have significant investments in our engineering, in our mechanical designs, in our electrical designs and what we’ve been able to do is create a three-tier growing model that from the bottom left to the top right and everywhere in between; our climate, our water, our temperature is very consistent which allows us to standardize the crop the whole way through.

At the end of the day we produce a product that is unmatched in the market place and unmatched from a financial cost standpoint at the same time.

Moncton proud!

Andre Belanger, Maintenance and Facilities Manager: So, we have basically three systems in this room. We have a cooling system, a heating system and a heat recovery system. We need thirty-six tons of cooling just to cool the lights. The rest of the capacity in the unit is to extract the moisture out of the air because the plant produces a lot of transpiration when they absorb nutrients.

We emphasize on high quality and standardized environments and this is how we can achieve it.

This latest expansion is equipped with an eight megawatt electrical servers. It has a lot of redundancy built in, so our mechanical is separate from our grow rooms.

We’re actually working on a substation, which will have two twenty megawatt transformers.

James West: Forty megawatts in total. That’s enough to power a small town.

Andre Belanger, Maintenance and Facilities Manager: Yeah, probably bigger than a small town. Yeah.

James West: What’s your electricity bill here every month?

Andre Belanger, Maintenance and Facilities Manager: Last month it was around three hundred thousand dollars.

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: These are the air handling units for the rooms. The air handling units are outside of the room so that anytime you have to change a filter, anytime you have to do some work you’re not bringing in anything into the grow rooms.

James West: Do they give off a lot of heat as well?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: Yeah. So, we capture that heat and we use it to heat up our irrigation water so that the plants are not getting cold water.

James West: It’s so complicated. The water is circulating by the air to get warmed up and then it’s going down into the food tanks and then it’s being recaptured like, who designed all that?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: It was a team effort.

James West: Okay but it’s completely a one hundred percent New Brunswick operation?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: A hundred percent!

James West: Take that west coast!

We’re here inside glorious and beautiful room twenty-four. What do we got here?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: So we’re in an Edison room and we’re looking at Edison Reserve here.

James West: When you say Edison, what are you talking about? I thought this company was called Organigram?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: We just recently launched our core recreational brand, The Edison Cannabis Company. Within the Edison Cannabis Company there’s a sub-brand called Edison Reserve. That’s the crème de la crème. It’s our top buds that get hand manicured and craft cured afterwards.

James West: So this is Edison Reserve?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: This and this and this and this and this.

James West: and the lower buds?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: They go to the Edison standard line.

They go through a machine trimming process. More of a mainstream product.

James West: Is it still going to be Organigram that focuses on the medical market?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: Exactly. Organigram will be our core medical brand, always will be.

James West: What are some of the other brands besides Edison that you’ve recently launched?

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: Yes, so we’ve got Ankr Organics which will be a recreational facing organic brand. We’ve also got the Trailer Park Buds.

Trailer Park Buds, we’re going to be launching with pre-rolls only across the country.

James West: Those guys can’t roll to save their lives. (Laughter)

Nick Robertson, Marketing Manager: Convenience, convenience is what it’s all about.

We’ve received some initial guidelines from Health Canada on how recreational packaging could look. It’s going to be heavily regulated, child resistant. So, we’ve gone ahead and done some initial mock-ups. You’re looking at the Edison Cannabis Company line of packaging. You’ll notice there’s the THC symbol that has to be on all packaging. The logo can be no bigger than the standardized THC symbol.

The Edison Cannabis Company was our decision to create a brand focused on innovation, focused on product and as we move forward with expanded product lines such as vaporizers and edibles, definitely the Edison Brand positions us well for future innovations.

Matt Rogers, Director of Operations: So at Organigram when you put that all together, I think it’s a combination that’s unseen in Canada in today’s marketplace.

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