Medcan has officially opened a new purpose-built indoor cultivation facility in Queensland, featuring a vertical growing design capable of producing 6,000kg of flower annually — twice the company's existing output.
The advanced facility, located in Brisbane's south west, took two years to plan and is expected to generate cannabis with an estimated value of A$60 million.
Beyond its six cultivation rooms, the A$12m build includes propagation, mother and vegetative rooms, as well as GMP manufacturing and processing areas.
Chief executive Craig Cochran called the opening a "momentous occasion" for Medcan and said it signalled a "massive and vital shift towards locally-produced medicinal cannabis".
"Up until now, we have been selling more medicinal cannabis than we can produce," he said. "The Heathwood facility, which has been purpose-built and uses a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, allows us to perpetually harvest our crop in an environment that is totally controlled by our cultivation team.
"We are incredibly proud to reveal one of the most advanced, high-tech medicinal cannabis facilities in the southern hemisphere, and for that matter, anywhere in the world."
Three of the six cultivation rooms at the 3,000 square metre site are already operational. The company says its vertical growing approach produces smaller plants with reduced waste, with crops arranged across two layers at 16 plants per square metre.
Cochran said: "To put this into perspective, a greenhouse set-up generally produces big plants with plenty of leaves and excessive biomass.
"Where they might grow one plant per square metre, a vertical farming set-up like ours produces smaller, condensed, structured plants which don't produce as much wastage and provide more cannabinoids per square metre as a result.
Medcan, which claims a 10% share of Australia's dried flower market, projects it will produce enough dried flower for 25,000 patients, based on a usage rate of two tubs of flower per month.
The company's HVAC system is comparable in scale to those used in international airport terminals, and its climate management software — called PRIVA — automates environmental conditions to maintain what Medcan describes as "high-quality growth".
Cochran said the software uses "algorithmic logic" to calculate the environment and receives information from hundreds of probes and different measuring equipment across the plant. Its irrigation system is also automated.
That level of automation will allow the company to deliver "consistent results which preserve the quality, composition and reliability of supply", he said.
The facility is expected to generate 100 jobs over the coming 12 months.
