The “full impact” of product for sale from Aurora Cannabis’ first major marijuana greenhouse in Canada won’t be realized until the end of June, 2½ years after construction started on the massive 150 million Canadian dollar ($113.7 million) facility.
Canada’s largest cannabis companies, and the 840 potential competitors in the licensing pipeline, face significant capital burdens – dragged out over the course of years, in some cases – to build cultivation facilities to meet demand for the country’s new adult-use market.
The Alberta-based company said the Aurora Sky greenhouse is now fully licensed by Health Canada for the cultivation and sale of cannabis and derivative products.
The multinational marijuana firm anticipates the facility will be fully planted in the coming weeks.
In September 2018, Aurora disclosed that cost to build Aurora Sky had jumped about 25% from a May 2017 estimate of CA$110 million.
The 800,000-square-foot facility “delivers massive scale, incorporates state-of-the-art technology and leverages a high degree of automation to deliver target production costs of well below CA$1 per gram,” the company said.
“Complete environmental control allows us to materially influence the variables that lead to consistent production, optimal yields and greatly reduce the risk of crop losses,” Aurora wrote in a regulatory filing.
Aurora is developing two more “Sky Class” facilities – Aurora Sun (1.2 million square feet) in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and Aurora Nordic 2 (1 million square feet) in Odense, Denmark.
The three facilities have a combined anticipated production capacity of 370,000 kilograms (815,710 pounds) per year.
Aurora trades as ACB on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange.
Matt Lamers can be reached at mattl@mjbizdaily.com
