Flora Growth Completes First Cannabis Extraction Through New Facility
Cosechemos, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Flora Growth Corp., an all-outdoor cultivator and manufacturer of global cannabis products and brands, has produced the first batch of crude oil through its newly constructed extraction facility. Further, Cosechemos has initiated the process to become EU-GMP certified. The completed facility will serve as the company’s primary processing hub, facilitating the drying and processing of Flora’s all-outdoor cultivated flower into finished, packaged dry flower and extracted material for domestic production and export to wholesale cannabis markets.
In December of 2021, Flora’s laboratory quality assurance and regulatory team completed the installation and testing of all extraction equipment. The team successfully extracted the first batch of High-THC crude oil, where the product was submitted to the Colombian Government to obtain Flora’s 2022 quota for THC derivatives. At this time, the team is continuing commercial CBD extraction.
With this major milestone complete, the company has initiated pre-audit work for the completion of the EU-GMP certification. Upon receipt of EU-GMP certification, and when paired with Flora Growth’s recent Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACP) certification, Flora will be positioned to target international medical cannabis markets. Flora intends on leveraging its cost advantage – with the company’s low-cost, outdoor-cultivated cannabis grown as inexpensively as 6 cents per gram – to penetrate international medical cannabis markets with its low-cost dried flower and derivatives.
“Global cannabis markets are growing at an incredible rate, and Flora is ready to meet that demand for cannabis-derivatives with the completion of our new EU-GMP compliant extraction facility in Colombia,” said Luis Merchan, president and CEO of Flora Growth. “This is another major step for Flora Growth, as we are now in a position to seek EU-GMP certification, with the ultimate goal of disrupting the global cannabis derivatives market with our low-cost product. Further, the completion of the facility immediately allows us to supply extracts and derivatives to our CPG portfolio, including Flora Beauty and Kasa brands, unlocking additional cost efficiencies.”
Flora Growth’s post-harvest and extraction facility stands at 10,500 square feet at Flora’s cultivation site in Bucaramanga, Colombia, bringing total extraction capacity to over 15,000 liters of distillate annually. The new facility is fully automated and features cryo-ethanol extraction that yields economical and high-quality cannabinoid derivatives at high-throughput. The facility expedites Flora’s ability to produce dried and packaged flower, derivatives, distillate, and finished goods entirely in-house.
“Being fully integrated, with internal processing, paired with our expanding distribution channels, was a strategic decision and one that we believe will have long-term benefit as the cannabis derivatives market further stabilizes and expands,” said Jason Warnock, chief revenue officer of Flora Growth. “This new facility will also help to increase the range of our product offerings, so that our team can not only produce high-quality cannabis flower, but also produce derivatives and active pharmaceutical ingredients (or APIs) for international medical markets.”
