Aleafia Health has completed the planting of its first outdoor crop, less than one week after securing Health Canada approval for outdoor cultivation. To the Company’s knowledge, Aleafia Health is the first licensed producer to complete a large-scale, legal outdoor crop in Canadian history.
Plants in the ground at Aleafia Health's outdoor cultivation site
"We now expect to harvest a substantial, low-cost outdoor crop later this year, accelerating our Company’s growth. This will allow us to scale our mission of growing, producing, and selling high-margin, value-added cannabis health and wellness products in Canada and globally,” said Aleafia Health CEO Geoffrey Benic.
Aerial view of the Outdoor Grow Facility
Aleafia Health CEO Geoffrey Benic & Production SVP
To minimize the period between regulatory approval and planting, Aleafia Health leveraged its vertically integrated supply chain across three Ontario cannabis production facilities. The 13,000 starter clones grown specifically for outdoor cultivation were propagated at the Company’s Paris Indoor & Processing facility. Cultivation staff from the Niagara Greenhouse facility, along with students of Niagara College’s Commercial Cannabis Production Program, were on-site and instrumental in allowing the Company to quickly scale operations during planting, the most labour-intensive period of outdoor growing.
The Aleafia Health team and students from Niagara College halfway through planting
Following the harvest of the Company’s first outdoor crop, the dried flower will be transported to the Company’s Paris Facility for extraction and production, adding to the Company’s branded product portfolio. The significant increase in supply will align with the Paris Facility’s Phase II expansion, which increases the Company’s extraction capacity to 50,000 kg annually. Prior distribution channels will include the over 60,000 patients seen by the Company’s national network of medical cannabis clinics along with export to Australia and Germany, both burgeoning medical cannabis markets, via existing, signed supply agreements.
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Aleafia Health
AleafiaHealth.com