Kincardine’s 7 Acres cannabis greenhouse is ramping up both hiring and construction, with over $70 million expected to be invested to see the entire 340,000-square-foot facility built out by 2019.

Originally envisioned as a six- to 10-year project with about about 100 employees will now staff upwards of 300 employees at full capacity.

7 Acres’ parent company, the publicly-traded Supreme Pharmaceuticals, aims to see the facility’s production skyrocket from 100kg/month of medical-grade cannabis the test grow room currently produces, to about 1,000kg/week with close to 30 grow rooms at peak.

Supreme Pharmaceutical’s chief executive officer John Fowler said the company has its license to cultivate, which was renewed for a year in March 2017, and is currently awaiting Health Canada approval for a license to sell cannabis, which he said they’re confident they’ll obtain due to their strong team and proven practices.

“Business-wise, waiting on the license to sell doesn’t slow down our expansion,” Fowler said. “The crew is going full-out to complete the project and deliver the 340,000 square-feet as quickly as possible, particularly with the recent news of the legalization for July of 2018.”

The original intent of the project was aiming at steady growth for a medical-only market. But Fowler said medical cannabis patients are now growing by about 10 per cent per month, with 100,000 so far in Canada and climbing, which he said are impressive numbers in the eyes of Supreme.

And with Canada’s Cannabis Act scheduled to see cannabis legalized for recreational sale and use by adults on July 1, 2018, 7 Acres is poised to supply a dual-channel medical-recreational cannabis market, expected to use similar production regulations as the robust pharmaceutical-grade cannabis they’re currently producing.

“We’re still waiting on further information from Health Canada, but they have said they are going to maintain a distinct and robust medical system, which I think is great,” Fowler said. “But the details as to how you’ll operate both is unknown. But we are advised that licensed producers are likely to be producing for both markets.”

Asked whether their investments would involve a cannabis processing facility to handle the recreation market, Fowler said 7 Acres aims to continue producing cannabis for bulk sales, by drying, mannicuring, and packaging the product.

“We’ll resell that as a branded product to other producers,” Fowler said. “At this stage we’re waiting on more regulatory guides about what the recreational point of sale looks like, before determining what investment is needed in distribution and the consumer packaging.”

“We feel at the end of the day, quality cannabis is desirable, whether you’re a medical user or recreational user. While the exact strains or products clients are looking for may change, if you have good production practices, good cannabis and lots of it, you’ll be successful in either market.”

The expansion at the Bruce Energy Centre greenhouse between Tiverton and Port Elgin is now expected to be one continuous project, Fowler said.

“As rooms are completed, we’ll move for licensing, we’ll bring them online and plant,” he said. “So you’ll see a pretty continuous, steady growth trajectory from here to 2019.”

The grow rooms are built to be identical, like condominiums Fowler said, which allows for numerous benefits from a management perspective in terms of staffing, resources and security.

“It also adds a lot of derisking for the construction project,” he said. “Essentially once the group has figured out how to build one room correctly, they’ll be replicating that about 30 times throughout the facility.”

The idea of the rooms being repeatable also makes it familiar with contractors, staff knows where equipment is to be and how the room operates, and for Health Canada, a design that has worked and been approved in the past, which aids regulation, Fowler said.

Supreme’s objective for 7 Acres is to make the facility “one of, if not the largest cultivator here in Canada,” Fowler said.

“Once we complete the greenhouse on the timeline that’s anticipated we’ll be near the top in terms of production, but getting that number one spot will mean expansion beyond this greenhouse here,” he said.

Though the footprint on the current site will be at its maximum capacity in 2019, he said Bruce County and areas around show promise for future projects.

A lawyer by trade, Fowler described the introduction of Cannabis Act last week was a “global event” with Canada being the first G7 country to take steps to legalize recreational cannabis.

“While the bill is far from perfect, I think it’s actually the perfect first step,” he said. “Doing something like this you have to be very careful, you have to be very measured in your approach. The reality is only a little over half of Canadians support legalization. So I think it’s important to take it slow and over time I expect to see liberalization of what today is a rather restrictive regulatory regime.”

And with a set timeline on legalization, Fowler said it was incumbent on 7 Acres to move quickly, both on hiring and construction.

So the company has set May 6-7, 2017 for its upcoming Job Fair at The Plex in Port Elgin from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. in order to fill 16-20 grower and sanitation positions for May 2017.

May 6 will allow 7 Acres a day to collect resumes and cover letters, with call backs and interviews to be conducted on May 7.

Fowler said 7 Acres staff has grown in the past year from over a dozen employees to over 50. The company expects to more than double that number by the end of 2017, and more than double that total in 2018.

“It’s a growth story for us. We’ve figured out what works in this first phase. We know we’re growing great product, we’ve figure out how to hire good people and teach them how to grow good cannabis. And now it’s just about replicating that a few dozen times through the facility until we reach that maximum output of about 50,000 kg/year.”

Fowler said though they wished government regulation went a bit more quickly, he said regulators have a unique challenge ahead of them when legalization arrives in 2018.

“They’re taking a product that has never been regulated modernly, and they’re applying regulations to it,” he said. “I’m sure everyone wants things with government to move faster, but I think it’s prudent they’re very measured in what they do and that they make sure they’re only letting continue in the industry, great companies, because this industry really needs to avoid any sort of scandal or bad actors.”