Hikurangi Cannabis Company has received a $7mil boost from private investors, taking them a step closer to setting up a supply-chain for medicinal cannabis.
CEO of Hikurangi Cannabis, Manu Caddie says, “We've secured another $7 million dollars from a couple of private investors so that takes us up to about $9 million in the bank so we can get going with our buildings.”
Hikurangi Cannabis are looking to build a new pharmaceutical processing facility in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa.
“That's where we will do the extraction, the processing into the containers that hold the rongoā and send it out to chemists and to doctors and overseas from here,” says Caddie.
Jobs for growing, cultivation and breeding will be based in Ruatoria, with a new cultivation facility also on the cards.
Caddie says, “That'll have 20 or 30 jobs to start with, in the growing under lights and also looking at glasshouses and getting outdoors as well is a priority for us so that whānau can be growing it outdoors without the capital costs to have to build an expensive indoor facility.”
Caddie says that legislation allowing the sale of medicinal cannabis in Aotearoa will soon be passed.
“It's been slow and coming and I think government has heard the desires of the patients and the industry to get going and so that's really good news for everybody that the law will be passed before Christmas”, says Caddie.
Hikurangi Cannabis hopes to have the new processing and manufacturing facilities operating by the end of 2019.