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“Not in my wildest dreams.”

Vic Neufeld can’t believe how fast and far the health venture he helped launch has grown since a single Leamington greenhouse switched three years ago from flower production to pot production.

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Aphria Inc. has mushroomed into a $2-billion corporation with 150 local employees — and Neufeld continues to dream bigger.

Photo by Dan Janisse / Windsor Star

The demand for his company’s medical cannabis has exploded, and, in just six months, Ottawa opens the doors wide on the sale of marijuana for recreational purposes to all Canadian adults.

Aphria can currently produce 10,000 kilograms a year of medical marijuana in a 100,000-square-foot operation. That production space, however, will triple in size by January, and the company is hopeful Health Canada will approve the corresponding tripling in pot output by the spring.

But the company is already halfway through construction of its next expansion phase, with another 700,000 square feet in greenhouse marijuana growing space to be ready by July or August 2018. Completion of that stage, and approval by Health Canada for the additional output, would mean jobs for about 400 in Leamington, said Neufeld, the company’s CEO.