The company, which bought almost 400 acres' worth of properties in Alachua County within the last year, has begun mass-producing cannabis products, clearing the way for the county to be at the forefront of a booming Florida medical cannabis market.

Quickly after arriving at Liberty Health Sciences’ Alachua County campuses, it’s clear the millions of dollars invested by the Toronto-based cannabis cultivator into former Alachua County farms are being put to immediate use.

The company, which bought almost 400 acres' worth of properties in Alachua County within the last year, has begun mass-producing cannabis products, clearing the way for the county to be at the forefront of a booming Florida medical cannabis market.

Liberty Health Sciences, a medical cannabis investor and operator that launched in 2011, closed a deal Feb. 16 to purchase 242 Cannabis, a subsidiary of medical cannabis company 242 Cannabis Canada — a $6 million deal which included a 387-acre parcel north of Gainesville, southeast of Brooker.

The land near 18770 N. County Road 225 had been owned by Alico Citrus Nursery, which shut down production in Gainesville last year.

The land is quickly becoming the home of what is called the Liberty 360-degree Innovation Campus.

Currently, more than 200,000 square feet of greenhouse space is being retrofitted with special lights that imitate the sun and blackout curtains to optimize the plants' growing power. Cannabis plants produce flowers when they receive 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness, said Libbie Clark, Liberty’s production manager. Darkness causes the cannabis plant to sprout the flower that contains THC or CBD, Clark said.

The idea for the Innovation Campus is to lead Florida’s medical cannabis market by launching innovative products, like healthy cannabis-infused foods, perhaps following a Blue Apron-style, prepared-meal model, said Lewis Swarts, Liberty’s general manager.

The company is also developing a product called Shatter, glassy-looking "dabs," the term for cannabis concentrates produced by extracting cannabinoids like THC or cannabidiol.

Shatter can be smoked by heating the product and smoking its vapor.

Liberty Health Sciences plans to roll out the product once it gets state approval, Swarts said.

The Sun on Wednesday visited Liberty’s facilities at the former 36-acre Chestnut Hill Tree Farm nursery, which it bought for $36.2 million a year ago.

Employees can cut the fully-grown plants, process them, extract THC or CBD oils, have the batch third-party tested and get the product into a customer's hand in about eight weeks. That quickness ensures the patient is getting the freshest, most locally grown products, Clark said.

The plants are all grown the same way, too, Swarts said.

“The patient needs to know if they take a hit of one of our vape pens that it’s going to feel the same to them every time,” he said. “The same goes for all of our products. Consistency is our number one priority.”

To help with product consistency at Liberty's Innovation Campus, where the bulk of its cannabis will be produced, greenhouses will expedite and automate production, Swarts said.

Soon, Liberty will go from having employees manually planting its cannabis to a method about 10 times faster.

A machine with robotic arms will quickly plant the cannabis plants into a small pot, packing the pots using uniform pressure per square inch, Swarts said.

Then, the plant will be loaded onto a conveyor belt and taken to a spot in one of Liberty’s two 80,000-square-foot greenhouses.

The plants will go straight into a new 12,000-square-foot, two-story processing area and never have to leave Liberty's air-conditioned greenhouses, which cost millions.

Clark said Liberty grows cannabis strains like Pineapple Express, Blue Dream, Treasure Island, and Super A5, each with a mix of potencies and levels of THC, which produce a psychoactive effect and CBD, which is used to treat anxiety and pain.

It also produces hemp with very low THC.

Inside its greenhouses, the scent of cannabis terpenes is strong, leaving clothes stained with the brow-raising smell.

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From the greenhouse, where cannabis plants are raised using tomato cages to support the heavy flower produced, the plant is cut and put into a machine that cuts its leaves off and eliminates any impurities, like mold or mildew. Liberty also cultivates strains of cannabis that repel insects, Clark said.

Cannabis is a sticky plant that retains a lot of moisture, so it’s baked in an oven to dry.

Once dry, it’s refined into small particles that resemble sand, before its oils are extracted using ethanol or hydrocarbons, Clark said.

The cannabis oils are then turned into vaporizer products, topical treatments, dermal patches or capsules taken orally.

Its products sell in retail under licensed brands, like Aphria. Liberty can only sell its products in its own dispensaries, which it calls Cannabis Education Centers.

Swarts said the company has four dispensaries already open in Florida, with plans to open about eight more before February, including one in downtown Gainesville in the former Cookiegazm spot.

Liberty Health Sciences, a publicly-traded company, has tripled its growth quarter over quarter since its Alachua County operation became functional, Swarts said.

He said the company contributed at least $10 million to the local economy within its first 90 days of operations.

It now has 165 employees, including biologists, engineers, backgrounds in chemistry, horticulture customer service representatives, all with educational experience from bachelor’s degrees to doctorates.

Swarts said Liberty is positioning itself to become the largest cultivator of cannabis products in Florida and across the nation. He said he and CEO George Scoris want to build a $50 billion company — a piece of which would have started in Alachua County. Lawmakers are currently debating how to better handle money earned by cultivating cannabis.

“We don’t care if a patient is using our products medically or recreationally, if lawmakers decide to legalize in Florida,” he said. “All we care about is that our patients use cannabis to further enhance their health.”