Thursday was the lottery for the Closed Coffeeshop chain Experiment. 39 growers from a total of 51 applicants are part of this. Almost a hundred applicants were already excluded. Five growers went to court with that rejection, at least one of them with success. The Ministry of Health and Sport will not disclose the list of selected growers until February: before a full approval, every selected grower has to successfully pass an integrity check (Bibob). If a grower cannot get through that step, they will then be rejected and the next one in line in the waiting list will take over. As of now, we know that outside grower Arthur Wildeboer is still part of the selection, while Project C is definitely not.
Omroep Brabant followed the aspiring growers to digital court ( article in Dutch).
A total of five lawsuits have been filed - one of them on Thursday morning. It was clear, though, that that would not be cause for a delay in the selection that same afternoon. The judge ruled that would be too drastic, partially because the other applicants in the selection should be able to move forward with their preparations.
At the same time, we know of another grower who was selected: this is QATI, and their cannabis cultivation facility will be located in Groningen, in the most northern region of the Netherlands. "We have a ticket!", Gertjan D'Haan, co-founder of QATI, shouted enthusiastically yesterday's afternoon, the Dagblad van het Noorden reports.
According to D'Haan, the facility will require an investment of 16 million euros. The company plans to build a 5,500 square meters high-tech indoor farm, that will be capable of producing up to 13,000 kilos per year.
