Aurora secures $250M financing

By Collin Gallant on June 27, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

Aurora Cannabis has secured a quarter-billion dollars in financing against its major existing production facilities in Alberta, while a new venture that’s now well underway in Medicine Hat could see a development permit issued today.

Company officials announced on Tuesday that the $250 million in financing from the Bank of Montreal is the largest loan offered by a charter bank to a company in the cannabis production sector. That includes a $150-million loan, and up to $95 million in revolving credit accounts as the company gears up for the decriminalization of recreational marijuana this fall.

Securing the loan is the nearly complete Aurora Sky facility located in Leduc and others in province.

Meanwhile, the company is preparing to ramp up construction on its even larger production facility, Aurora Sun, in Medicine Hat.

Earth movers have been clearing and levelling a 71-acre site in the Box Springs Business Park that is said to be conditionally sold.

The final development permit for the building is set to go before the city’s municipal planning commission today.

Documents show the site, with a new municipal address of 3101 Box Springs Way, is located northeast of the city-owned Canalta Centre.

Access would be on a yet-to-be built extension of Box Springs Way that is the responsibility of the park’s private owners.

That will connect to a parking lot with 506 stalls, and a main building that at 152,000 square metres, or 1.2 million square feet, will cover more than half the initial 50-acre site.

Planning work is being handled by the local office of Scheffer Andrew, while Dawson Wallace construction is advertising that it’s been awarded the major construction contract with subcontracting opportunities to follow.

Most recently in Medicine Hat, Dawson Wallace was the contractor of record for the Strachan Corner development, which has seen the former Walmart Supercentre site on Strachan Drive redeveloped into a major commercial park.

Aurora has previously said the local facility will be designed and engineered through its partnership with Danish firm Aurora Larssen Projects.

Earlier this month, council approved direct control zoning for the project, which didn’t comply with any existing land use on city bylaws.

At the same time, council approved a resolution relating to building standards, which gives planning commission authority to let the development permit without returning the item to council.

The company has said it hopes to be in production in early 2019, and with high-tech production methods, could produce 150,000 kilograms of cannabis for a cost of less than $1,000 per kilogram, or $1 per gram.

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