A ground-breaking ceremony was held Thursday afternoon in Kelowna for a building dedicated to the research and development of cannabis.
This week, the Flowr Corporation and Hawthorne Canada, a subsidiary of Scotts Miracle-Gro, announced plans for the 50,000 square-foot facility. The building will be adjacent to Flowr’s 85,000 square-foot cultivation facility on McCarthy Road.
Building plans show plenty of glass and wood, with a roof-top terrace.
The two facilities are expected to create upwards of 200 jobs in Kelowna.
According to Hawthorne and Flowr, the facility will include laboratories, indoor and greenhouse grow suites, training areas and genetics breeding areas in a single building. Flowr expects to develop and test Hawthorne cultivation systems such as lights and fertilization and irrigation systems in the facility. Flowr also intends to research genetics and cultivation data analytic systems in the facility. Hawthorne is funding the construction of the facility which is expected to be completed in the summer of 2019.
Flowr said its Kelowna location is approximately 20 per cent operational and is expected to be fully complete in early 2019.
A press release says the facilities will employ proprietary cultivation systems and are engineered to meet pharmaceutical quality production standards, allowing Flowr to grow premium cannabis flower. Flowr expects to produce upwards of 12,000 kilograms of cannabis flower in the facilities beginning in 2019.