RE:Woweeee matesJust another nail in EVEs coffin !
According to Health Canada, nearly 700 acres were licenced for outdoor cannabis as of April, up more than 20 per cent from October 2019. Meanwhile, pot companies are sitting on record stockpiles. As of April, Canadian cultivators and processors had amassed620,144 kilograms of unpackaged dried flower inventory. That comes despite record retail sales of $185.9 million in May. WeedMD (WMD.V) finished planting more than 18,000 cannabis plants in a 27-acre field in Strathroy, Ont. in June. Last year, the company grew nearly 9,000 kilograms of saleable flower at a cash cost of $0.11 cents per gram. In the company’s greenhouse, grams cost $0.84 to grow.
“You can’t beat the cost. It’s fantastic,” Angelo Tsebelis, the company’s CEO, told Yahoo Finance Canada in an interview. “You can never substitute what Mother Nature provides. All you can do is try to replicate things like sunlight, heat, cool nights, and the rest of the conditions that are ideal for growing.”
Knocking on wood, Tsebelis expects about the same yield from his second outdoor harvest. This year, the company will use one-third the labour and spend less on startup costs, since the field required only minor upgrades. He said the farm is “well advanced” from where it was at this time a year ago, and predicts a significant cost-per-gram reduction.
In Brant County, Ont., 48North Cannabis (NRTH.V) is also in its second season of outdoor cultivation. Last year’s crop brought in 12,000 kilograms at a total cash cost per gram of $0.25 on its 100-acre farm. Like Tsebelis, 48North’s new CEO Charles Vennat told Yahoo Finance Canada he expects a bigger, cheaper crop this time, but declined to disclose numbers while the plants are still in the ground.
Aleafia Health (AH.TO) said it produced 12,747 kilograms of outdoor dried flower at an all-in cash cost to harvest of $0.10 per gram last year. The company’s CEO, Geoffrey Benic, recently referenced growing outdoors for as little as $0.04 per gram. He said the company could potentially grow 100,000 kilograms of low-cost outdoor cannabis in 2020.