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“We have never been cultivators and we do not intend to. But we do know the wellness business well, and to us, cannabis is a global consumer products phenomenon that does not happen so often. We thought, we got to get in there,” said Neptune’s chief executive Jim Hamilton, whose company was founded in 1998 but only entered the cannabis space three years ago.

Neptune says it has the capacity to extract 6,000 metric tons of cannabis in a year and has multi-year supply agreements with Canopy Growth, the first licensed producer to introduce extract-based CBD-heavy cannabis softgels to the adult-use market. But the company only received its license to process cannabis from Health Canada in early January, and as such, has yet to see revenue from its cannabis business.

At least on paper, Valens Groworks has a smaller processing capacity than Neptune — 240,000 kilograms a year, according to a recent press release from the company. But the company’s president of strategy and investments, Everett Knight says that efficiency in extraction is Valens’ core focus.

“First of all, we have five different kinds of extraction methods at our facility. Most people are only using CO2 as a solvent for extraction. Second of all, we’re extracting at a 90 per cent rate, which means that 90 per cent of the component we want in cannabis, THC or CBD, is being extracted, so we are getting higher yields,” Knight explained.

Last November, the company received a Health Canada licence to sell its extracted product to other licenced producers. The company has agreements with Tilray, Organigram Inc., Canopy Growth and The Green Organic Dutchman but in 2018, its revenues came only from consulting agreements and not from actual sales of cannabis extracts.