01 Apr Everything You Need to Know About Canada’s Micro-Cultivator Licenses
Canada legalized cannabis at a time when the craft-brewers rule the beer world, which has really set the table for Canada’s craft-growers.
There is obviously a metric tonne of potential for any would-be growers. But of course, there is also a tonne to know. The industry is heavily regulated.
There are different micro-cultivator licenses available, depending on what you want to do. To ensure you know exactly what you will need, we’re going to look at the Big 3.
The Cultivation License
Most people go for the cultivation license. Basically, it’s a craft-growing license, just like craft breweries. A craft brewer can’t make more than X thousand liters a year and this license works much the same way. A cultivation license allows you to cultivate or grow cannabis, up to 200 square meters, 2,150 square feet of table space.
With a cultivating license, you can possess cannabis, you can possess cannabis seeds and clones, you can grow, you can grow on it to flower, you can trim, you can dry and you can sell. But, you can only sell to other licensed producers or other micro-groves. You can’t sell medicinal and you can’t sell to the general public yet.
If you want to sell to another company that has a license to sell medicinally, you can sell to them and then they can sell your product medicinally, if that’s the way it’s been grown.
Can I have Multiple Growing Rooms?
200 square meters is pretty small. Most of the flower rooms that we build for a large LP are larger than that, and that’s one room. And they normally have five or six of those flower rooms. You can have multiple rooms as long as the entire facility doesn’t go over 200 square meters of table space or canopy where the cannabis is present. So, a typical micro grown cultivation would have one bedroom and two flower rooms, or four flower rooms and two bedrooms. You get the idea.
Anything with cannabis present has to be within 200 square meters or 2,150 square feet. You can have a 5,000 square foot facility, but as long as the amount of plants and the amount of canopy that it covers is less than 2,100 square feet, you’re gold. You’re good.
Keep in mind, the 200 square meters is of canopy space, not necessarily flora space. So, I can’t put a 1000 square foot rack in the corner and have three levels of it to give me 3,000 square feet of growth space. You can only have two levels on it.
The Production License
Over the next two years, everything that you see on the shelf in a grocery store could be infused with cannabis. Infuse your beer, infuse your coffee, infuse your lip balm, infuse everything.
The production license doesn’t allow you to grow cannabis, but it allows you to do stuff to it, like extract and infuse. To do it on a micro scale, you can process up to 600 kilograms or dried equivalent per year.
According to Health Canada, this is the ratio.
It’s 1:1, gram for gram with dry flower. If I get 600 kilograms of dry flower from the LPs and I want to extract that into some oil, that would be my entire year. Just that one shipment, because you can only do 600 kilograms per year or the equivalent. I can bring in gallons and gallons of oil and spin it up into anything I want. But it’s only 600 kilograms or equivalent per year that you’re allowed to process.
The Nursery License
So, from a facility design standpoint, LEDs use less power, less energy, less heat. There’s less of a heating growth, meaning that the air handling system doesn’t have to be robust.
The third type is called a nursery license. And generally, people will get that as a type of add-on.
The nursery license allows you to do genetics and whatnot on the plant. It allows you to cross breed and bring your own strain in if you want with your own seeds, and then you can sell those seeds to people that want to grow. Or you can make a clone and sell them to people that want to grow. Or you can sell it to other nurseries.
Want to Know More?
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