U.K. medical cannabis firm Eco Equity has started work on a £5 million medical cannabis cultivation business in Zimbabwe.
Based in London, it is one of 40 foreign and domestic companies to have secured a licence to grow in the African country since it changed the law last year. It says the license allows for the cultivation of cannabis, manufacture of products and export from 2,000 hectares of long-term leased land, approximately 40 miles from the capital Harare.
Eco has partnered with Dutch Greenhouses, of Holland recognised experts in constructing indoor growing facilities.
Sales by Autumn 2020
A second partner in the venture is Australian cannabis company Delta Tetra which has the expertise to ensure the plant meets Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certification. Eco Equity has recently employed agricultural experts and a professional grounds team to undertake the groundworks and construction of the greenhouse on land in the town of Marondera, it says in a press release.
Its CEO Jon-Paul Doran said, in a press release, it is on schedule with ‘work beginning on its first greenhouse’, adding: “We believe we have the perfect site in terms of both location and climate to cultivate the optimum quality cannabis, which we can use for medicinal purposes.”
It says the greenhouse will be completed in early 2020 and it will be able to harvest, distribute and supply ‘top quality CBD to the global market by the final quarter of 2020’. Zimbabwean website Businesslive reports its Government is encouraging the growth of the cannabis industry to boost foreign earnings. The country’s severe foreign currency crunch has led to shortages of fuel, medicines and basics, such as bread, it says.
Low Cost Cannabis production
Eco Equity says its mission is to ‘grow one of the best medical cannabis products and provide high-quality infused products to all qualified dispensaries and retail stores in Europe’. It says its development is being funded with £5m of mainly private investments with the ‘total capital cost being £3m, leaving £2m as working capital’.
It says it will be creating more than 100 new jobs in the country and will provide ‘firewood to the local communities in Marondera’; as its stated mission is to ‘help rebuild the Zimbabwe economy through its medicinal cannabis investments’.
It says production costs will be around below $0.50 per gram well below the cost of $2 a gram which is common in similar North American facilities.
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