Aleafia Health Completes Planting of Its First Outdoor Cannabis Crop

TORONTO, June 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) PRESS RELEASE -- Aleafia Health Inc. has completed the planting of its first outdoor crop, less than one week after securing Health Canada approval for outdoor cultivation.

“We now expect to harvest a substantial, low-cost outdoor crop later this year, accelerating our Company’s growth," said Aleafia Health CEO Geoffrey Benic. "This will allow us to scale our mission of growing, producing, and selling high-margin, value-added cannabis health and wellness products in Canada and globally.”

See a slideshow of photos from the first planting here; all photos courtesy of Aleafia Health:

To minimize the period between regulatory approval and planting, Aleafia Health leveraged its vertically integrated supply chain across three Ontario cannabis production facilities. The 13,000 starter clones grown specifically for outdoor cultivation were propagated at the Company’s Paris Indoor & Processing facility. Cultivation staff from the Niagara Greenhouse facility, along with students of Niagara College’s Commercial Cannabis Production Program, were on-site and instrumental in allowing the Company to quickly scale operations during planting, the most labor-intensive period of outdoor growing.

Following the harvest of the Company’s first outdoor crop, the dried flower will be transported to the Company’s Paris Facility for extraction and production, adding to the Company’s branded product portfolio. The significant increase in supply will align with the Paris Facility’s Phase II expansion, which increases the Company’s extraction capacity to 50,000 kg annually. Prior distribution channels will include the over 60,000 patients seen by the Company’s national network of medical cannabis clinics along with export to Australia and Germany, both burgeoning medical cannabis markets, via existing, signed supply agreements.