THC buys $2.5m cannabis facility in Queensland — but it’s still waiting on a licence
Health & Biotech
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The Hydroponics Company has bought a $2.55 million Queensland medical cannabis manufacturing facility.
Leo Pharma sold its 1112 sq m Gold Coast botanicals extraction plant to THC (ASX:THC).
The medical cannabis developer has not specified exactly what it intends to produce at the plant — apart from a focus on a broad range of treatments for different ailments.
The raw material will come from third parties in Australia and overseas.
“The facility is a fully functioning biomanufacturing plant with extraction technology to fractionate and crystalise during the manufacturing process, and a high-quality purification system,” the company says in a statement due to be released today to the ASX.
Licence yet to come
THC does not yet have a manufacturing licence from the government so it can’t yet use the plant for medical cannabis.
The company applied for a licence in the fourth quarter of calendar 2017 via subsidiary CannDeo.
A spokesman told Stockhead THC expected to receive a licence in the “coming months” although the exact date was up to the federal government’s Office of Drug Control which hands them out.
CannDeo was awarded licences for research and cultivation in July and October last year, but doesn’t have the all-important permit that gives the go ahead to actually start growing marijuana.
Growing pains
THC has not had the easiest start to the year.
A war of words between a former chairman and then-chair in February was followed by a boardroom brouhaha which saw CEO David Radford and COO Debbie Ormsby exit.
A day later at an extraordinary general meeting four directors were turfed from the board and yet another chairman — early THC investor Steven Xu — was appointed.
The search is now on for a new independent chairman.
Mr Xu said of the latest purchase that it provided THC with “large scale, state-of-the-art biomanufacturing capabilities” — a major component of THC’s “roll-out strategy”.
THC plans to become a vertically integrated medical cannabis processing and production company.
THC is planning to export products from the Southport, Queensland plant.
