Uruguay Marijuana Applicants Seek Advice in Canada

More than 100 businesses are hoping to compete for the right to grow marijuana in Uruguay’s newly legalized pot market. Drug secretary Julio Calzada told The Associated Press in May that the government can satisfy demand in the legal pot market by licensing up to six growers to cultivate marijuana on plots no larger than 5 acres (2 hectares). ¹

While some uncertainty remained earlier this year, marijuana growing in Uruguay is looking a lot more secure now that the main opponent, and previous favourite to win the November Presidential election, Sen. Jorge Larranaga, lost the June Presidential Primary leadership race for his party. The right-wing National Party's surprise winner by a wide margin was congressman Luis Lacalle Pou, who supports home-grown marijuana. ²

Though it remains unclear how the exact selection process will determine who is licensed to grow marijuana, serious investors from Uruguay are already coming to Canada to learn about the systems, processes, and procedures that are used to grow the best medical cannabis in the world.

GGS spent several days touring officials from Uruguay through glass and poly greenhouse operations as well as Licensed Medical Marijuana warehouse facilities.

In Canada the medical marijuana regulations enforce extremely clean, well organized production facilities and processes. There are a lot of new companies making a lot of unsubstantiated claims in this new marketplace, but GGS has been helping growers since 1979, and we already have several Licensed Providers growing in our facilities. said Michael Camplin, Sales Manager at GGS. Showing these men from Uruguay Licensed Producers with beautiful robust flowering cannabis plants and the technology that we use to facilitate superior production clearly introduced them to the enormous potential when done right

Recently there has been a lot of bad press around Health Canada and several Licensed Producers, with product recalls, and rumours of some losing crops, but Duane Van Alstine Manager of Niagrow Systems, and a previous grower manager of a 300,000 sqft glass greenhouse range feels this is completely understandable and encouraging. "I've been growing for over 20 years, and I will tell you growing is both an art and a science. You can't go from a 1,000 sqft grower to 10,000 sqft, to 30,000 without suffering some growing pains. You need to establish the right technology for the size, and the grower has to have the ability and time to adapt." Duane adds, "No one likes regulations, but quality control is an important asset. Our systems help ensure those quality checks are in place throughout the plants' growth. And it is working, none of our customers has had any product problems.

Doing things the right way is clearly an important corner stone of the GGS philosophy and one that Gerry Harrison brought with him when he bought Growers Greenhouse Supplies Inc. back in 1984. Gerry's background was in Mining and Industrial Construction, and he has impressive credits to his career which include building a hydro tunnel through Mount Misty in Peru, building submarine tunnels under the Bahamas, and constructing the antigravity chamber 500 feet underground to train the NASA astronauts for the Apollo 11 mission to place man on the moon.

When asked how designing marijuana growing systems fit into his diverse career Gerry said It is most interesting! I am learning a lot. And since the media keep comparing the Marijuana boom to the gold rush I suppose it is fitting that a mining engineer would be central to installing the best growing systems.

Gerry got involved with Medical Marijuana growers for the first time in the fall of 2013 when GGS officially added a division of the company to assist hopeful applicants to the Canadian MMPR. At the heart of the matter this is business. My family has owned and operated more than 25 companies, in countless industries. We have been helping growers grow their plants and their businesses for over 35 years.

There is a lot of excitement in Uruguay over the possibility of a successful legal business growing marijuana, however, like Canada, and Israel, Uruguay's legal marijuana is being set up to be heavily regulated and controlled. With 100 hopefuls and only 6 licenses planned to be awarded there will be many more disappointments than successes.

Recognising this, the smart money is looking to partner with companies like GGS who are already successful in developing commercial scale marijuana grow operations.

<sub>1:The Washington Post


2:ABC News</sub>