The 300,000 square foot unit is expected to cost £10million and could grow close to 8 tons of marijuana per year, based on industry standards, according to Hull Live.
All the crops grown at the secret location will be used for medicinal purposes and cannabidiol products. London-based Sativa Investments is behind the plan for the Wiltshire venture, Somerset Live reports. The facility could earn the company £32million per harvest.
The news follows an announcement from Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, who said that UK doctors will be able to prescribe cannabis-derived medicinal products starting in November. Currently, the law in the UK allows specialist doctors to prescribe medical cannabis for illnesses like epilepsy or chronic pain.
But just like in Germany, all the cannabis medications currently being prescribed in the UK have to be imported because the drug has been illegal in the country for decades, according to the Daily Mail.
Geremy Thomas, chief executive officer Sativa Investments, spoke to BBC Radio’s Farming Today programme last Thursday (January 24) about security issues the company faced when “hoodlums from Frome” discovered their test fields. The “hoodlums” posted a video online.
“One of the problems we had is a security issue where three of the local hoodlums from Frome spotted the fields from afar and started dancing around with their cameras and published that on Facebook, which prompted us to plow the crop into the ground very quickly.”
British Columbia, Canada-based Veritas Pharma Inc. – a research-based global medicinal cannabis company – is expected to advise Sativa Investments on which strains of cannabis would be most useful to grow.
Mr. Thomas, added: “We have a test facility here which will allow us to grow different strains of cannabis to assess with our laboratory. But we’re also interested in testing different forms of hydroponic mediums and we’re also looking at different forms of lighting.”
