Aurora Cannabis is seeking proposals to sell, lease or partner on the partially completed $200-million greenhouse and processing facility in northwest Medicine Hat. -- News Photo Collin Gallant
Aurora Cannabis is accepting offers for part or all of its partially complete Aurora Sun Complex in Medicine Hat.
Work to licence the massive greenhouse in the city’s northwest was halted last year as the company reined in capital spending, scaled back its production plans and closed its smaller greenhouses.
This winter it announced that its huge growing facility at Leduc would only operate at 25 per cent capacity, as supply and demand evened out in the young marijuana market.
This week a listing with global commercial real estate firm Colliers advertises the company is willing to discuss plans for the 1.7-million square feet of growing space, support and warehouse buildings with potential buyers, tenants or partners.
Company officials told the News that Aurora is enacting a strategic plan to strengthen the company, and the sales process is in the early stages.
“Aurora continuously and carefully reviews the company’s operations network to ensure it is fit for our business today and in the near term,” stated vice president Michelle Lefler in an emailed statement.
“We are actively marketing the facility for alternative use.”
The listing describes the building on 72 acres of land it the Box Springs Business Park as the “Solar Fields Complex.”
“(Aurora) is open to a broad range of potential transaction structures,” it reads.
It outlines building specifications, trading areas, Medicine Hat’s claim of 330 days of sunshine, and says a purchaser has “the potential for significant environmental and social impact” to drive diversification of a region “heavily reliant on the project.”
It also states the construction budget to date at the facility is $220 million.
A statement from the City of Medicine Hat’s economic development department says the city doesn’t take a position on private sector transactions.
Elected officials have said over the past year when production had ceased that they hoped the pause was temporary, and more recently Mayor Ted Clugston defended the original deal with the company to use $6 million in reserve funds to waive development levies.
The building had added to the taxation base and was too valuable not to be put to some purpose, he said during the State of the City address in January.
Potential uses listed in the new sales brochure include agricultural growing and processing, storage, research, manufacturing or warehousing.
The region is noted as central to renewable energy development, and close to major markets in western North America.
It also suggests data processing as a potential use in the building that is built to accept a 54-megawatt power supply from the city network.
Potential co-work space could comprise 37 bays that can be segregated in the original plans of a 1.4-million square-foot growing space.
A connected 250,000 square-foot building pegged for support and initial processing.
The deal to bring Aurora to the city in 2018, ahead of the opening of the recreational cannabis market later that year, was heralded as a major win, with jobs and power sales coming to Medicine Hat.
At that time, the plan was to build an 800,000 square-foot greenhouse to service medical cannabis markets, and employ more than 400 full-time workers.
However, cannabis companies have had difficulty showing a profit in the sector that boomed in value leading up to legalization in Canada.
Last year, Aurora said it was reducing production at its only operating “Sky Class” greenhouse to about 25,000 kilograms per year.
The stated production capacity at Aurora Sun was to be 260,000 kgs annually.
In another move to rebalance its finances and expansion plans last year, Aurora sold a huge greenhouse in Exeter, Ont., rather than spend money to retrofit the former vegetable greenhouse to grow highly regulated cannabis.
It acquired the 1-million square-foot facility, plus adjoining land for future development totalling 164 acres, in a merger with competitor MedReleaf, but sold it for just $8.6 million, compared to a $26-million asking price.
