Inside one of the largest cannabis greenhouses in the world

Eve & Co., a cannabis cultivator in Ontario, Canada, is making waves with more than its 1,000,000-square-foot greenhouse and cannabis crop. Boldly women-centric—from its leadership to its marketing to its product lines—it’s welcoming everyone to come along for the ride.

This is an excerpt from a full cover story of Cannabis Business Times, March 2021.

Early Evolution
When founder and CEO Melinda Rombouts applied to become one of Canada’s first medical cannabis Licensed Producers (LPs) in 2013, her decision was practical. Rombouts operated a wholesale greenhouse that grew seasonal flowers, such as bedding plants and hanging baskets, for U.S. and Canadian markets. But the seasonal flower business had grown increasingly unpredictable and competitive. “I had this greenhouse, and I knew that we had to do something different,” she recalls. When Canada’s Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR) program launched, Rombouts thought the new crop might keep her greenhouse business alive. The process took more than two and a half years, but Canada awarded license No. 34 to Natural MedCo Ltd., now a wholly owned subsidiary of Eve & Co. The company promotes itself as “Canada’s first female-founded licensed producer of medical marijuana.”

Cultivation Expansion and Automation
Going public allowed Eve & Co. to build an 18-acre, state-of-the-art greenhouse expansion designed specifically for cannabis cultivation. The 780,000-square-foot greenhouse pushed the company’s total footprint over one million square feet. February 2020 saw the first plants moved into place.

The custom-designed facility emphasizes attributes to increase air circulation, control humidity, and optimize the company’s focus on sun-grown plants. With airflow in mind, Rombouts insisted on full butterfly roofs, which open like giant butterfly-wing vents. The diffused glass used in the new greenhouse expansion increases uniformity of light and temperature within.

Agricultural background
Director of Cultivation Tom Jobson joined the company in early 2018. Like many Rombouts hires, Jobson came from an agricultural background. While many cannabis companies focused on cannabis growers who had grown in small-scale, indoor grows, Rombouts looked to growers with large-scale greenhouse or ag experience who were familiar with growing at scale. Jobson started as an IPM (integrated pest management) scout and worked his way up.   For all practical purposes, like many commercial-scale greenhouses, Eve & Co.’s greenhouse is one large production space. The older greenhouses, now being retrofitted with new systems, house a clone room and two vegetative rooms.

10 sections
The 18-acre expansion has north and south “flower rooms” that run 11 acres and 7 acres, respectively, with a combined capacity for 272,000 flowering plants at a time. “We do have it divided into 10 sections, but it is all open,” Jobson says. The emphasis is on natural sunlight, but that is supplemented by high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting during cloudy weather and short winter days on a limited, as-needed basis.

Sustainable water management
There’s unmistakable appreciation in Jobson’s voice as he talks about the fully automated facility. Beyond the butterfly venting, additional features include a boiler system that drives environmental controls. A water reclamation system reclaims, treats, and recirculates excess water from a four-zone fertigation system. Carbon dioxide captured from the boilers enriches plants with CO2.

Data analysis key for cultivation
Data is captured and analyzed at every turn. “It’s really allowed us to dial in the nutrients that we’re supplying to the plant. It’s really optimized plant health and really increasing cannabinoids and terpenes and all the things that our customers are looking for,” Jobson says.

This is an excerpt from a full cover story of Cannabis Business Times, March 2021.

You can read the full original article by Jolene Hansen at CannabisBusinessTimes.com