A Chatham-Kent based medical marijuana company is expanding to London and more than doubling its footprint.
AgMedica Bioscience Inc. announced Thursday that it has acquired two indoor processing facilities, which will allow it to increase future production and cultivation capabilities. The expansion will also mean more local jobs for the region.
"AgMedica has gone from five founders to approximately 100 employees in 18 months. We expect to double that number in Chatham-Kent within in the next 12 months," said Dr. Trevor Henry, AgMedica's CEO.
A release from the company said one of the facilities is based in London and features 100,000 square feet of fully automated processing, packaging and bottling.
"[The London facility] will be used for processing. More specifically processing involved with oil, capsule formation, gell caps and beverages," said Henry.
The second facility is on Riverview Drive in Chatham and provides 300,000 square feet that is "ideally suited for future cannabis-plant cultivation."
"As most would know, Chatham-Kent has been an area with strong agricultural roots which gives us wonderful access to a very strong workforce skilled in the tasks of large-scale agriculture," said Henry.
The expansion brings the company's total number of facilities to five, with a combined total of over 760,000 square feet of cultivation and pharma-grade, multi-tier production capacity.
The company said it is also committed to enhancing its existing properties in Chatham on Riverview Drive and Richmond Street.
"We've been here a long time," said Henry, who added that the majority of the company's five founders were born and raised in Chatham-Kent. "We hope to provide a lot of jobs and have a very successful business and be one of the largest scale cannabis businesses in the world."
The Riverview facility is already able to produce 6,000 kilograms of cannabis annually and the company said its expansion plans there would more than quadruple that to 26,000 kg with completion expected in the first quarter of 2019.
One of the company's properties on Richmond Street is still being used for cultivation while a second site is being established strictly for tissue cultures.
