One of Canada’s largest medical marijuana producers, Canopy Growth Corp., has increased a subsidiary’s production and processing capacity by almost threefold through the purchase of a former candy factory and the 42-acre site it sits on for 6.6 million Canadian dollars ($5.1 million).
In a news release, Canopy Growth said the entire facility, in Smiths Falls, Ontario, is “by far the largest indoor cannabis production facility in Canada and likely the world.”
The company, which is headquartered in the building, had been renting roughly 157,000 square feet of the 472,000-square-foot former chocolate factory. The facility had gone mostly unused since Hershey Canada left Smiths Falls for Mexico in 2008.
The building also houses a research and development area, oil extraction facility, quality assurance lab and what the company calls the “industry’s only seed breeding area.”
Canopy Growth bought the facility from an investors group that included Canopy Chairman and CEO Bruce Linton and Guy Saumure & Sons Construction Ltd.
Canopy achieved significant milestones in 2016 when it became the first cannabis cultivator to list on a major North American stock exchange and the first marijuana company to be valued at more than CA$1 billion ($743,060,740).
