Tasmanian Botanics is positioning itself to become one of Australia's largest domestic suppliers of medicinal cannabis, having commenced cultivation at its newly constructed 10-chamber, 1.1 hectare greenhouse.
Four of the chambers are now actively growing plants, with the company projecting an average harvest cycle of once every three weeks.
An additional two chambers are expected to come online in April — one of which will be dedicated to the vegetative growth phase — shortening the interval between harvests to approximately two weeks.
In a final stage of the rollout, blackout curtains will be installed across the remaining four chambers during winter, allowing Tasmanian Botanics to run two seasonal crops through spring and summer of 2024/25.
The start of cannabis production at the new site comes two years after the project was placed on hold by then-incoming chief executive Dan Howard.
When Howard took the role in late 2021 — having previously worked with Tilray and Valens — he chose to maximise output at the existing facility before committing millions of dollars to a large-scale upgrade.
Now that production is underway, the company expects each chamber harvest to yield between 175 and 200kg of dried flower. The expanded capacity will also allow it to introduce 28g jars of dried flower to its product range.
"We should have 3,000-4,000kg of dried, trimmed flower out of the greenhouse this calendar year and then up to 1,500kg of outdoor flower," Howard said. "All of the capacity will be used for dried flower and we are focusing our first harvests on existing products which will enable us to build inventory and launch 28-gram versions of Amethyst, Jade and Opal.
"But there is always byproduct that is used for extraction. And with our recently expanded extraction capacity we've been able to leverage the increased THC biomass to launch our new THC 50 oral liquid."
Howard also confirmed the company will introduce a newly bred in-house cultivar in April.
The original greenhouse, meanwhile, has been repurposed as a mother plant nursery.
"We will be able to keep enough mothers to have up to six active strains at a given time," Howard said, adding that the company would begin with four strains and "a couple of others in commercial scale trials."
Howard described the new greenhouse as "on par with the largest operating greenhouse in the country."
"We also believe we have some advantages being in Tasmania, specifically a climate that doesn't require expensive dehumidification and cooling," he said.
"Being the only completely vertically integrated company in Australia, we also don't rely on any outside manufacturing or extraction partners.
"Up to this point our biggest bottleneck has been flower supply, but that shouldn't be a problem going forward.
"We expect to be the number one Australian-grown brand by the end of 2024 and expect to be challenging even the largest brands who import all of their product and don't do their own manufacturing."
