Ontario-based Mary Agrotechnologies is heading overseas.

The company has secured a licence to grow, extract and process hemp-derived CBD in the world’s most populous nation, reports Yahoo Finance.

“It’s very hard for a foreign company to receive a licence in China. It’s almost near impossible,” says Frank Qin, the company’s 28-year-old founder and CEO. “I had so many trips between Canada and China last year. It took us more than half a year just going back and forth.”

While hemp-derived CBD is legal in China, it is strictly regulated, and limited to non-ingestible products, such as topicals and cosmetics. Despite the tight regulations, Qin says one Chinese cosmetics company that features CBD-infused products is earning more than $20 million a month in sales.

Mary Agrotechnologies began in 2018, using crowdfunding and an Indiegogo campaign to build an audience and launch the Mary system, an enclosed home-growing unit. Within 36 hours, the company had reached its target.

The unit is built almost entirely out of electrochromic glass that transitions from clear to opaque to suit the growing cycle. It also features multi-directional LED lighting, sensors that monitor growing conditions and an advanced air filtration system. The unit is about four feet tall and a foot and a half wide (1.2 by a half metre).

Qin built manufacturing relationships in China to get the Mary system off the ground and those connections helped propel his acquisition of a coveted CBD licence. The company will be operating out of a 150,000 sq. ft. facility in Yunnan, which is currently under construction, and the facility will be licenced for cultivation and extraction.

“It’s like our grow boxes, but 200 times bigger,” Qin said.

The province of Yunnan approved hemp cultivation in 2010 and Heilongjiang followed suit in 2017. Most of the hemp produced in the two provinces is for China’s textile industry, reports Yahoo Finance. 

Qin plans to sell the CBD extract to product manufacturers and, eventually, launch his own line of infused consumer products.

“We might be the first one in North America to have this full set of licences,” he told Yahoo, adding that, despite the current tensions between Canada and China, he’s hoping to be a bridge-builder between the two nations.

“Because we are a Canadian company entering China, we want to bring peace and understanding to both sides, as well as economic value,” Qin said. “We have a bigger vision than just grow boxes.”