By Tom Mark

True Leaf Ready To Move Into Lumby

Jan 3, 2018 | 12:07 PM

True Leaf Medicine International is moving forward with plans to build a medical marijuana plant in Lumby.

It is exercising its option to buy 40 acres of land in the Lumby Industrial Park for what will initially be a 16 thousand square foot hydroponic grow facility.

CEO Darcy Bomford says the equity crowd funding campaign in the United States has been very successful.

“We finally were able to go live with that in November and we’re seeing over 5 million dollars U-S committed already. Our target was 10 million which we hope to close on this month.”

Bomford hopes to be ready to go this summer.

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“We’ve already started demolishing the building and we’ll be putting up a brand new building on site, a 16 thousand square feet grow with a 9000 square foot central hub that we can add other wings to as we grow the company.”

The construction will involve composite walls and wash down rooms in a food-grade facility focused on hydroponic growing

Bomford says he expects to have a license to grow from Health Canada and a license to sell by the summer.

Hiring could be underway soon.

“Probably fairly soon. At some point we’ll have a job fair either in Vernon and Lumby or maybe just in Lumby. We’ll see what kind of applicants we’ll get. It’s going to take a few more months to finish the facility.”

Bomford says his plan is to hire at least 10 people at the beginning and wants dedicated people willing to grow with the company.

The medical marijuana business is booming with aggressive activity in takeover bids.

But Bomford is confident True Leaf is in a good position.

“I suppose a hostile takeover is always a concern. But we have a good team. Management owns a good chunk of the company so that in some ways helps prevent that from happening.”

He says the company has a strong focus on its U-S shareholder market and will try to spread out its shareholder base.

Canadian firms are in a different position than those in the United States.

The medical marijuana business has become so big, it resembled the dot com influx years ago.

Millions of dollars are invested in startups, but some recent figures suggest that as many as 70 per cent of those startups will fail.

Bomford says the barriers for entry into Canada initially were pretty high.

Companies had to have a pretty sophisticated team to go through all the quality control issues, security requirements, full business plan and capital.

Bomford says there wasn’t a lot of room for smaller operations to enter the market, unlike in the states.

“Some of the companies that didn’t plan as well as others haven’t made it, but that’s the same for any kind of business. You really have to plan everything out carefully and if you don’t it’ll end up biting you.”

He says Health Canada has done a lot of research and taken a lot of steps to do it properly to come up with a system that works.

by Tom Mark