PharmaCielo Buys 3.8 Hectares of Additional Land to Expand Cannabis Production Facilities in Rionegro

Canada-based PharmaCielo Ltd. will acquire 3.8 hectares of additional land in Rionegro to expand its cannabis cultivation and production operations.

The purchase was made by its Colombian subsidiary PharmaCielo Colombia Holdings SAS and will be the site of the company’s planned cannabis processing plant, oil extraction facility, and research center. The firm stated that it signed the purchase agreement on April 25 and expects the deal to close in the coming days.

The new land is adjacent to PharmaCielo’s 27-hectare marijuana plant nursery in the central Colombian department of Antioquia. The firm says it has already brought equipment sourced from abroad to the country in preparation for the expansion. In the coming months as construction is finished, PharmaCielo plans to begin installing the new equipment “in readiness for commercial cultivation in 2017,” said the company.

The research facility, which like the other equipment will meet standards required by the governmental licensing authority, is going to be used to test different strains of cannabis and processing methods.

Federico Cock-Correa, director and CEO of PharmaCielo Colombia Holdings, called the expansion “an important next step in the development of PharmaCielo’s capacity for both cultivation of cannabis and processing of cannabis flowers into oil extracts.”

PharmaCielo received its license to process and manufacture cannabis oil extracts in 2016. It formally requested the license in February 2016, just weeks after President Juan Manuel Santos signed a law to legalize medical marijuana in December 2015.