Crowdfunded Marlborough medicinal cannabis company to begin hemp planting

A Marlborough medicinal cannabis company has broken a crowd-funding record and will begin growing low grade THC hemp this week.

A total of $3.4 million had been pledged for Puro at midday on Monday, breaking crowd-funding site PledgeMe’s previous record of $2.06 million.

With a licence approved on Friday, this week Puro will begin planting three hectares of low-THC content hemp at the company’s site at Kekerengu, on the coast between Blenheim and Kaikōura.

Puro managing director Tim Aldridge said the company was starting off with three hectares, and would look to expand to 25 hectares within the next two years.

“Kekerengu provides the perfect conditions, with a costal micro-climate that is ideal for hemp production.”

The Kekerengu site, located across State Highway 1 from The Store, is one of two sites secured by the company, the other being nine hectares in the Waihopai Valley. 

Puro believed the sites had the capacity to become the country’s largest grower of medical cannabis and hemp, due to Marlborough’s high sunlight hours.

Puro cultivation director Tom Forrest had been advising the company for several years, and said last month Marlborough’s clean air, absence of pollutants and sunlight would make it a “point of difference compared to everywhere else in the world.”

The Ministry of Health planned to make regulations on the Medicinal Cannabis Scheme by mid-December, which were expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2020. This would allow Puro to cultivate cannabis for commercial as well as research purposes.

The country was also set for a cannabis referendum, for recreational use, held alongside the 2020 election.

Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/marlborough-top-stories/117862136/crowdfunded-marlborough-medicinal-cannabis-company-to-begin-hemp-planting

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