Canopy Growth Receives License To Begin Producing Cannabis At Fredericton Facility
FREDERICTON – Canopy Growth Corporation has received the Health Canada license to begin producing cannabis at its facility in Fredericton and will be hiring more than 130 people with the first harvests expected to be on the market within six months.
“New Brunswick has emerged as a leader in the legal cannabis sector and the province is an excellent place to do business,” said co-CEO Bruce Linton in a release. “We will leverage our existing operational expertise to ensure we support the needs of our customers while making a meaningful contribution to the local economy primarily through new job creation.”
Developed in collaboration with Canopy Rivers Inc. and operating under Canopy Growth’s flagship Tweed brand, the facility will employ people in a wide variety of positions, including lab supervisors, technologists, growers, post-harvest crews, quality assurance experts, as well as shipping and maintenance crews.
In the coming weeks, Canopy Growth will be announcing details about local job fairs to fill these positions.
The medical cannabis producer expects to cultivate more than 5,000 kg of cannabis per year at the $40-million facility.
The company first announced plans to open the new production facility in New Brunswick last summer. At the time, Linton told Huddle most of the jobs would be well-paid, permanent positions.
“Most of the jobs are full-time. If you’re in quality assurance or production, they’re full-time jobs. I’m sure there’ll be some part-time opportunity for people that are going to be in retail,” said Linton.
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All of Canopy Growth’s workers will be offered an equity stake in the company. The salaries for the Fredericton jobs will begin in the mid $30,000 level and move up from there.
“These are intended to be good jobs where you’re going to be doing something that’s actually quite interesting and new,” he said.
“We don’t expect you to show up and say I’m an expert at this because that would mean you were doing a lot of things that are illegal. It’s more important to us that you be timely, on schedule and ready to learn the methods that we use.”
Some positions may need scientific background, but Linton is confident there are plenty of New Brunswickers living elsewhere with those skills who want to return.
“Now we’re creating that sort of way to get home,” he said.
The Fredericton facility is located at Vanier Industrial Park and spans nearly 100,000 square feet. Around 50,000 square feet will be used for production.
Canopy Growth had originally hoped to begin production last fall, but it couldn’t proceed until it received the Health Canada license.