By Seth DuChene
Editor
Abcann Medicinals is growing its growing capacity.
On Friday, the company broke ground on a new $40 million growing facility located at the corner of Kimmett Side Road and Goodyear Road.
Abcann is already expanding its current facility on nearby Van Luven Road, where it currently has two ‘flowering rooms’ for the production of standardized organic dry bud medicinal cannabis. The new facility will increase that growing capacity with 20 new flowering rooms says its founder Ken Clement.
“It will be a full production facility,” said Clement following Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony. “It’s exactly the same thing (as the facility on Van Luven Road) but bigger. You could think of that first facility as more of a prototype facility, and where we’ve proven out our model and proven how to grow the product standardized.”
He also said that there are plans to add another 12 flowering rooms at the Goodyear Road site.
Clement indicated that the new growing facility still requires regulatory approval from Health Canada; similar approvals have already been granted at the Van Luven Road site. “Once we have that done here (at the new facility), we can keep adding and adding and adding onto this structure, and we don’t have to go through that same process.”
Hastings-Lennox and Addington MP Mike Bossio, Greater Napanee Mayor Gord Schermerhorn and L&A Warden Bill Lowry were all on hand for Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony.
“I can’t express my appreciation enough for what you’re doing for our community, for the perseverance and the determination that you’ve had to realize this dream of yours that started many years ago,” Bossio told Clement. “I can’t believe the hardships and the difficulties you’ve had to overcome in getting to this (point). Really, this day is all a result of the hard efforts of you and your staff and so many other people who believed in your dream.”
“(Abcann) is a great corporate citizen, we’re glad to see them in our municipality,” said Schermerhorn. “We certainly are glad to see the expansion, it’s nice to see a company grow and prosper and I know Abcann is doing that.”
Lowry said that he’s happy to see Abcann making progress when many others have fallen short. “I know in my 20 years of politics, I’ve seen many applications and a lot of rejected proponents. (To navigate) the bureaucracy and the hoops and the financial commitments and everything that has to be made over the time to get to where you are today, I tip my hat. I’m glad you succeeded,” he said.
Clement said that local support was crucial to Abcann’s successes to date. “We couldn’t have gotten as far as we went in the early days without the support of Napanee and what the town has done, from all levels of the (government).”
He also thanked his team at Abcann for bringing the company to this point.