Emerald Health Therapeutics Inc. (TSX.V:EMH) (OTCQX:EMHTF) (FRA:TBD) is a licensed producer of medical cannabis and distributes through an e-commerce platform. CEO Bin Huang talks about the company’s transition into a large-scale licensed producer, as well as adapting to advertizing regulations once recreational marijuana is legalized in Canada in 2018.
James West: Bin, thank you for joining me today.
Bin Huang: Thank you, James, for the invitation. Pleasure to be speaking here.
James West: Bin, let’s start with an overview: what exactly is the value proposition to the investors in Emerald Health?
Bin Huang: Yeah. Emerald Health is a licensed producer in Canada. We actually have for medical cannabis, we actually have a full set of licenses. We cultivate cannabis, we manufacture cannabis oils, and we sell dried cannabis and cannabis oils for medical purposes using our e-commerce platform. So the value proposition is that we have a medical focus. Our team has very extensive experience in medical research, and also in operations – execution of business strategy.
As a licensed producer, we have a very excellent track record, but right now this year, we are on the cusp of transformation into a very large-scale licensed producer, just in time, ready for the legal market next year in Canada. And I think relative to other major licensed producers that have a million square foot capacity, we are nowhere near the valuation, so I think that’s a very compelling situation for us to be in, facing the transformational growth this year.
James West: Sure. So you have 500,000 square feet under cultivation now?
Bin Huang: The current facility we have now is a pilot facility in Victoria, British Columbia, and we do our cultivation there, but it’s a pilot facility. The growth, the expansion, is what we are focusing on, and we actually have two major projects. One is the joint venture with Village Farms, and that has an existing 1.1 million square foot of state-of-the-art greenhouse already in place and operational; we just need to do the retrofitting and get the Health Canada license for it to be used for cannabis.
James West: And how long do you anticipate that will take you?
Bin Huang: Well, we want to be ready for legalization. So mid-next year, we want to be growing and we want to start harvesting. So that’s the very aggressive timeline we are targeting.
Bin Huang: And the other major piece of growth plan, expansion plan, is our Metro Vancouver property. We leased 32 acres of land, and that is big enough to build another 1 million square foot of growth space, but we are taking a modular approach. So the first two phases will just be 50,000 square foot each, and that will be 100,000 total in cultivation space, and that’s for high-quality indoor growing and also for extraction, for processing, for the infrastructure there.
James West: Wow. Okay, so you’re diversified across greenhouses and indoor, you’re diversified across British Columbia, I guess. How many patients – do you have patients that you sell to now, and if so, how many, and where are they based?
Bin Huang: So we do sell to patients. We started selling dried, I think two years ago, a