NEWS PHOTO EMMA BENNETT
Mayor Ted Clugston addresses the audience at the State of the City luncheon Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2019 at the Medicine Hat Lodge. Clugston announced at the luncheon hemp oil producer Folium Biosciences is planning to build an extraction and processing facility in Medicine Hat this year.
Hemp oil producer Folium Biosciences is planning to build an extraction and processing facility in Medicine Hat this year, bringing with it 250 full-time jobs, officials with the Colorado-based company announced Tuesday.
The news, delivered at the Mayor’s State of the City Address, caused a major stir among the several hundred attendees when Mayor Ted Clugston touted the progress made on economic development front over the past year.
It concluded with the announcement that the Colorado-based company will build a 110,000-square-foot plant in land located in the Box Springs Business Park. It will satisfy demand for the company’s domestic expansion as it expands into Canada as well as supply Latin American distribution. Company CEO Kash Shan said new, local cannabis greenhouse projects and a work of Medicine Hat’s investment attraction team, Invest Medicine Hat, the decision was made to locate here.
“We’re a relationship-based company. With Aurora Cannabis’ and our presence here, Medicine Hat can be a global leader in the new cannabis (sector) space,” said Shan.
His company extracts the psycho-reactive substance of TCH from industrial hemp leaving only cannabinoid product, or CBD, which is increasingly being studied as a medicinal element.
Based in Colorado, the company currently employs 250 workers and contracts growers on several thousand acres.
In southeast Alberta, is company is also seeking to get growers under contract and expects his demand to be in the 10,000-acre range in several years.
More to come …
