Alberta’s capital region is set to be home to the largest cannabis gummy production facility in the country.

Dynaleo is set to open a 26,000-square-foot manufacturing plant near the Edmonton International Airport after it secured a processing facility permit from Health Canada. Executive chairman Michael Krestell said the next step now is to get a licence to sell so the company can move its edible products to be sold from the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) online store and other businesses.

“We’ve been very active in the facility commissioning our equipment and so we are just in the final stages of training on that equipment. Then it’s all up and running,” said Krestell.

Speaking from Toronto, Krestell said cooperation from all levels of government, an established cannabis industry and skilled workforce were all factors in picking Edmonton as the facility’s home.

There are currently 30 people working in the facility as the company prepares the building and starts processing. Krestell said he expects a total of 75 jobs will be created during peak production.

A tray full of cannabis gummies sits at the end of the depositor machine as Dynaleo is opening the largest cannabis gummy production facility in the country, in Nisku, June 25, 2020. Ed Kaiser/Postmedia

“We are solely focused on edibles and we’re doing edibles on an industrial scale, which is something that everybody else in cannabis, or specifically in gummy production in Canada, is unable to do now,” said Krestell. “Some market estimates are pointing to a gap between industrial supply and consumer demand of approximately 80 million packaged units a year.”

Krestell said his company is now getting ready to fill that multimillion-dollar gap.

The facility will join an area of the country that is already rich in cannabis infrastructure. Aurora Cannabis, one of the largest retailers of legal weed in the country, has an 800,000-square-foot production facility.

Aurora however announced earlier this week it is laying off large portions of its workforce and closing five facilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The corner of the building that Dynaleo is in, as they’re opening the largest cannabis gummy production facility in the country, in Nisku, June 25, 2020. Ed Kaiser/Postmedia

In the city of Edmonton, Token Naturals announced last November it had secured a long-term lease on an 8,300-square-foot extraction facility in a 60,000-square-foot industrial lot, with the hopes of constructing an operation with the ability to process up to 65,000 kilograms of dried flower into cannabis extract each year.

In the early days of legalization, Alberta was home to 36 per cent of the country’s cannabis retailers.

The Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis website shows there are 486 licensed retailers in the province.