Saskatoon company aims to grow and wholesale cannabis to Prairie recreational, medical markets

A Saskatoon company is betting Saskatchewan cannabis users will prefer homegrown.

It's not an idle gamble.

The walls and roof are already up on the Bold Growth Inc. building north of the airport. The company is hiring workers and checking its way through a Health Canada application to become a licensed grower.

"There's definitely some risk to it," said Bold Growth's chief operating officer Spencer Veikle.

"Your final licence isn't granted until your building is finished. But there's multiple steps in the licensing process, and we passed most of those quickly and effectively."

The company is not going into the project blind. It's working with an Ontario company called Cannabis Compliance Inc. to negotiate the Health Canada application.

The company has worked with 200 firms in the blossoming industry and has a 100 per cent success rate, said Deepak Anand, its vice-president of business development and government relations. 

Anand said security and background checks are priorities for the government.

"You want to pay very close attention to security, in terms of both physical security, as well as security clearances as well that Health Canada does on individuals that are applying for licensing," he said in an interview.

Veikle said that Bold Growth supplied the government with a thick binder of all its security provisions, from its relatively secluded location to the perimeter fence and array of cameras.

Veikle said that company has ambitious plans.

It will begin with 10,000 plants. There will also be an extraction laboratory onsite where products will be developed for the non-dried-flower markets.

He said the company is going to try and serve both recreational and medical markets, depending on where the demand is the strongest.

It expects to begin planting its first crop this fall, and begin harvesting in the spring. It's target is to produce about 2,500 kilograms a year.