160,000 patients/year to be treated by new SA medicinal cannabis facility
The nation’s largest medicinal cannabis factory will open in Adelaide’s south in 2021 — and the search for people to build it is about to get underway.
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Tenders to build the nation’s largest medicinal cannabis processing plant in South Australia – and the world’s first to produce oil from plant genes to patient – will be called next month.
The $50 million start-up cultivation and processing centre by Australian company LeafCann will double the size of an existing research facility purchased last year in Adelaide’s southern suburbs.
Construction is expected to begin around April next year, along with recruitment of an initial 200 staff and up to 800, depending on future demand.
The location and the licensed quantity of cannabis plants to be cultivated and manufactured into medicinal cannabis oil, paste and tincture will remain confidential due to security and commercial reasons, LeafCann CEO Elisabetta Faenza told the Sunday Mail.
“It is the largest manufacturing crop of any Australian licence for medicinal cannabis – so it’s a substantial manufacturing facility that has the capacity to produce many tonnes of extracted oil,” said Ms Faenza.
“At full capacity the medicinal cannabis produced by LeafCann in South Australia will help treat 160,000 patients a year.”
Ms Faenza said the production of medicinal cannabis from genes harvested from the best genetic strains in Australia and cultivated under best practice within an entirely enclosed facility to end product would be internationally significant.
“Almost everywhere else is manufacturing from non-Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certified material.
“We will be the first in the world to do this throughout the entire supply chain and SA is the headquarters of it all,” she said.
“This is important because it ensures patient safety, product consistency and quality and efficacy in clinical research trials with no variation from batch to batch.”
The first product is expected to be ready for market by early 2021 using sourced plants while LeafCann builds its genetic store to start GMP cultivation from plant cell to patient in 2022.
LeafCann is developing training programs for new employees and is seeking national accreditation for industry-wide use across Australia.
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A spokeswoman for Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment David Ridgway said LeafCann from NSW, local GD Pharma and a licensee that elected to remain anonymous had received federally granted medicinal cannabis manufacturing licences for SA.
LeafCann is the only one, however, with licences for cultivation and research, both received in August.
Planned LeafCann research is expected to include testing the health benefits of treating dementia and endometritis with medicinal cannabis.
Canada, one of the first countries to legalise medicinal cannabis, estimates the medicinal cannabis market will grow from $667 million in 2016 to $2.6 billion in 2025. Anecdotal evidence from the industry suggests worldwide demand for medicinal grade cannabis outweighs current supply.