Aurora Cannabis has broken ground on a cannabis cultivation facility that, once completed, will be 800,000 square feet — as large as 16 football fields, according to a Calgary Sun report. The facility, known as Aurora Sky, will be capable of producing 100,000 kilograms of cannabis annually.
Steve Dobler, Aurora president, said the design of the greenhouse took one year and that he expects the construction will be completed by October 2017. The company boasts that, once complete, the Leduc County, Edmonton facility will be the largest and most advanced cannabis cultivation site in the world.
“Our objectives are very clear: to build the largest production capacity, with the highest production quality and the lowest production cost,” he said in a press release.
Presently, Aurora operates a 55,000-square-foot facility in Mountain View County, Alberta, which could see its own expansion.
“Our rate of growth, with rapidly increasing demand for Aurora’s high quality cannabis products, clearly justifies our expansion in both Mountain View County and Leduc County,” CEO Terry Booth said.
The new facility will employ a Dutch-designed hybrid greenhouse system, which will allow the company’s cultivation experts to have “precision control over all critical environmental variables,” the company said in the release. The pre-engineered part of the structure has been underway in the Netherlands since October.