Lambton County’s first state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation facility is now officially in production.

High Park Farms – an affiliate of Tilray, one of Canada’s leading federally-licensed cannabis producers – held a formal opening ceremony at its Enniskillen Township facility on May 15.

Located on the former site of the Enniskillen Pepper Company, the facility represents a $30-million investment into a site that presently consists of 13 acres of greenhouse on 100 acres of land.

The company says the site acquisition has positioned it well for future expansion.

“It’s a super exciting day,” said general manager Kirsty Burns.

“A lot of work has gone into this and we are really proud to officially launch this facility today.”

Mayor Kevin Marriott said High Park is poised to become Enniskillen’s largest employer.

The site presently employs 50, mostly local staff, but the company expects that to expand to 250 over the next several years.

Marriott said it was interesting that the discovery of oil put Enniskillen on the map in the 19th century, but that industry was soon overtaken by agriculture.

“It’s kind of neat to see this ‘modern agriculture’ bring the area to the next stage,” he said.

Tilray CEO Brendan Kennedy said he was grateful for the warm welcome the company has received.

“As we grow we look forward to being a large employer in the area and a major contributor to the community,” he said.

Communications director Zack Hutson said High Park Farms received a federal licence in April to cultivate cannabis under the Access to Cannabis For Medical Purposes Regulations.

“Right now this is a medical facility but we can apply to be approved for ‘Adult Use’ sales when the government passes the legislation legalizing that use,” Hutson said.

“Our intention would be to do that.”

He said legislation legalizing Adult Use was originally scheduled to be passed in July but will probably be delayed until later this year.

However, Hutson said the company supplies cannabis to tens of thousands of medical patients in Canada and also exports to 10 other countries.

“There is lots of pent-up patient demand and we have a portfolio of brands that are already very well know.”

Production manager Donna Houssin said cultivation at the site began in early May with the arrival of thousands of cannabis plants from its facility in Nanaimo, BC.

“It was a very exciting transfer which took 36 hours,” she said, adding it was a carefully choreographed process that included several teams of pilots, drivers, production managers and an extensive security crew that monitored the entire process.

“We went from Nanaimo by ferry to the mainland of B.C. and then to Vancouver International Airport where the plants were loaded onto a chartered Boeing 747 cargo plane bound for Hamilton Airport.”

She added that from there the plants were transferred to climate-controlled semi-trailers and delivered to the Enniskillen site.

Houssin said the plants populated two of the six zones in the greenhouse. She estimated it would take another three to four months to bring the operation to full production.

Master horticulturist Francoise Levesque said the production process begins with a stock plant propagated from an unrooted cutting.

“We take a clone or an unrooted cutting and plant them into grow bags containing a medium or soil substrate,” she said, adding that it takes them 14 to 21 days for them to root.

“Once those cuttings have roots on them they are transplanted into starters or forage pots.

“Then we start doing some trimming to get that plant into the shape we want it to be when it head into flowering.”

A final transplant is done into slabs or cubes in the greenhouse where the plant enters a vegetative stage.

Levesque noted that at the vegetative stage the plants require 18 hours of sunlight daily before they switch over to flower production, adding that depending on the cultivar, flowering will last anywhere from eight to 11 weeks before being ready for harvest.

The plants, she noted, are grown in a fertigation system, meaning every time the plants are irrigated they receive a calibrated mixture of fertilizer and other nutrients.

“It’s a constant feed basically.

“Everytime the plant receives water, she receives everything she needs to grow and thrive.”

She added that the water and fertilizer are filtered through the plant into a gutter system that returns the runoff to a mixer tank where it is monitored for nutrient content and is re-mixed and the calculated nutrient loss replaced and returned to the plants, eliminating significant nutrient loss in the runoff.

“We have developed a recipe in terms of the ratio of nutrients we want and maintain a proper balance of nutrients the plants require.”

She said the company has more than 60 different cultivars (seed varieties), some of which have characteristics that are in demand for different uses and in different markets.

“We don’t grow all the different varieties at the same time, we select them based on supply and demand and also use them to enhance genetic diversity,” she said.

She said cannabis is an herbaceous plant and one of its main characteristics is that it is a hybrid, hermaphrodite plant, meaning it has both male and female characteristics.

“They can pollinate themselves and produce their own seeds,” she said, adding that only female plants are grown at the Enniskillen facility.

Levesque noted that the High Park facility is in the business of harvesting the flowers and not seeds, adding that it is unlawful for them to sell seeds.

“We don’t want the plants to be pollinated because that would change the structure of the flowers.”

She noted there are two main products produced from the flowers: the flowers are a finished product and are trimmed, packaged and branded at their London manufacturing facility and then shipped to their medical customers.

A byproduct is also produced in the form of oil or extract, and approximately 20 different products can be made from that, including edibles, sprays and vaporizers.

Levesque said after the plants move out of the flowering stage they go through what is known as a bucking process (a term borrowed from the hops industry), which means stripping the flowers off the plant.

Houssin said the flowers then go through a curing process.

“Traditionally in the cannabis world this process takes two to three weeks,” she said.

However, she added that due to a proprietary process the company owns, it has shortened that time to two or three days.

To enter the greenhouse facility, employees and visitors are held to very strict hygienic standards, requiring them to gown up and don hairnets and plastic boots.

“It’s a very sterile environment,” said Levesque.

“We don’t want to bring in any spores from outside or allow any hair or dirt to contaminate plants.”

She said that by law they are required to use only organic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, as conventional inputs are not permitted.

In addition to High Park Farms, Tilray also has an affiliation with cannabis production sites in Nanaimo B.C. as well as one in Portugal.