The Portuguese private company Sabores Púrpura is ready to start one of the world’s largest cultivations of medicinal grade cannabis plants.
Sabores Púrpura was awarded with a license to produce medicinal cannabis plants by the Portuguese medicine authority, made public last January. You may already know the name of this company from the agrifood industry, mainly by its extra-sweet strawberries that are popular in the Dutch market. Sofia Ferreira with Sabores Púrpura explains this is one of the biggest medicinal cannabis licenses in the world.
"Portugal has been highlighted in the cannabis industry for the country’s law and regulations, but also because of Portugal’s special conditions to grow cannabis plants at a lower production cost, with high quality standards, as medical use requires, with a very low CO2 footprint", she says.
Plant standardisation
Therefore, the Portuguese private owned company set its sights on producing high-quality, safe cannabis-derived products for the medicinal industry, and the path to success is already being paved by the cannabis leaves, as the company just finished the plant's standardization and will be able to start producing on a large scale in the next month.
“All the knowledge we gained in the years working with strawberry will support us in growing the safest cannabis,” says Sofia Ferreira with Sabores Púrpura “Both these crops are regulated and require growers to be compliant with specific regulations. Of course, these are different for strawberry and cannabis. However, our experience with strawberries taught us how to grow high-quality product, in an efficient and safe way, while staying compliant at the same time.”
According to them, the company has built GMP compliant greenhouses where the medical cannabis will be grown. “For growing cannabis, you need to have a GMP compliant facility,” she explains. “There are differences between facilities for strawberry and cannabis. For instance, for cannabis, you need to use glass.”
Lighting experience
The company has been gathering all sorts of data over time, which has allowed them to start this new venture on the right foot. “We have a lot of experience in lighting. Plus, before we started the construction, we conducted temperature, humidity and climate studies. This ensures us to have efficient facilities, and most of all, efficient procedures,” she further explains.
“This is a new industry for everyone. It was made legal very recently worldwide, so we had to make everything from scratch and learn a lot in the process. We’re very happy with the results though. Just finished the plant's standardization and we’re able to start large-scale production next month.”, says Miguel Silva, CEO of the company.
Miguel Silva, CEO
Personal experience
As for the investment in this new business, the company’s owner adds, “This is not quite new to us, nor is it a rush for the ‘green gold’. We started to study this project 4 years ago, because my youngest son had seizures and my wife and I started to search for a holistic approach to deal with his condition. That was how we found the cannabis medicines and felt compelled to work with it. This is a very unique plant and we wanted to make sure it’s both effective and safe for medicines production.”
In 2020 the company expects to have their products available in the European market.
For more information:
Sabores Púrpura
saborespurpura.pt