Tantalus Labs, dubbed the “Tesla of cannabis,” has completed construction on its state-of-the-art greenhouse facility in British Columbia and could begin selling its products in Canada as early as 2018, Business Insider reports. The company earned the nickname due to its sustainable cultivation technologies.
The facility, which took over two years to complete, relies on sunlight instead of electric lighting, incorporating other green technologies, such as a rain capture system used to irrigate the crops.
Dan Sutton, founder and managing director of Tantalus Labs, said that while cannabis grows well outdoors the industry was driven into indoor facilities so growers could hide their farms.
“It’s a lot easier to hide plants in basements and in bunkers than to cultivate it in the light, because it is federally illegal,” he said in the report.
The company worked with designers, scientists, and engineers to create and build the facility, looking to the agriculture industry for best practices.
“We take those core concepts and we iterate on them so we can provide consistency, not only in product output, but in [meeting] a pharmacological standard,” Sutton said. “Nature has done an excellent job of cultivating plants for the last billions of years. The closest we get to a natural strategy, the more effective we are.”