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This article was published 22/2/2019 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s Delta 9 Cannabis is laying out its multimillion-dollar expansion plans for the years to come, plans CEO John Arbuthnot says will help build the company into "the Seagram’s of pot here in Manitoba."

Right now, Delta 9’s government-licensed Winnipeg facility can grow about 4,224 kilograms of cannabis per year across 154 "grow pods," the company’s name for its proprietary cultivation rooms built from modified shipping containers. An expansion underway this year should roughly quadruple that capacity, adding 454 new grow pods with 154,000 square feet of production room. That project is "well-funded" with $24 million of Delta 9’s existing cash, Arbuthnot said.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES John Arbuthnot, CEO of Delta 9 Cannabis.

And that’s just the start. From 2020 to 2022, Delta 9 plans to spend about $115 million building more room to grow.

"Overall, the plan is 15 modular expansion buildings (with) about 480,000 square feet" of growing space, Arbuthnot said Thursday. "It should take our overall production capacity on our site here in Winnipeg up to about 60,000 (kilograms of cannabis) a year."

An on-site cannabis extraction facility will also be included in the 2020-22 expansion, which will allow Delta 9 to produce the concentrated cannabis oil used in value-added products such as marijuana edibles. Arbuthnot said financing for the multi-year expansion could come from various sources, including cash flows, commercial mortgages or capital markets.

Delta 9 sells its crop only into the Manitoba market right now, but its planned increase to production capacity means the company will be seeking new markets outside the province, Arbuthnot said. The company plans to announce a new supply deal in the coming weeks, he added.

New Manitoba cannabis stores are also in Delta 9’s immediate future, he said. The company’s retail subsidiary currently operates a single store on Dakota Street in St. Vital, but plans to open a River Avenue location in the first half of this year, along with stores in Thompson and Brandon.

Arbuthnot previously said a dearth of legal cannabis was partly responsible for the delays in opening its next set of stores. That supply shortage is improving, he said.

"It’s probably the best supply picture that we’ve seen since legalization," he said.

"Now, we’re still having to take things week by week, in terms of monitoring those inventory levels very closely. But we’re confident that in the next month to two months, we’re going to be able to open a second and a third store with the supply picture looking the way it is today."

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sol_israel