Rubicon Organics (ROMJ.C) announced the completion of their first harvest at their 40,000 square foot hybrid facility in Ferndale, Washington today.
The first successful harvest means that Rubicon can now move onto acquiring licensing for the launch of their 1964 Supply brand.
The Washington facility is a venlo-style greenhouse located on 16.6 acres of industrial land, and sports the capability to produce 4,500 kilograms of cannabis per year.
“This harvest has successfully demonstrated that Rubicon Organics’ proprietary cultivation program and facilities are able to produce exceptionally high-quality organic cannabis at scale. We look forward to demonstrating this outstanding quality and output at our Canadian site on our promised timeline with the first harvest this summer,” said Jesse McConnell, chief executive officer and co-founder of Rubicon Organics.
In other news, Rubicon’s facility in Delta, B.C. has been hiring in preparation for their first commercial production harvest, expected in Q3 2019.
The Delta facility uses natural sunlight supplemented with LED (light-emitting diode) technology, allowing Rubicon to produce excellent quality organic cannabis at scale. The facility will have a production capacity of approximately 11,000 kilograms per year.
All of the crops grown by Rubicon Organics use their proprietary cultivation methods to produce superpremium organic cannabis. The company has recently completed the organic certification application with the Fraser Valley Organic Products Association, and will be able one of the few LPs in Canada to supply certified organic cannabis when the application is processed.
The company took out a two year, $3,355,000, loan at 12% interest per year to finance their operations in their Delta facility, and also provide some working capital. The loan also includes 671,000 common share purchase warrants at an exercise price of $4.50, and will expire on Apr. 25, 2022.
Why Organic?
The simple answer is that there’s a market for it.
- Over 47% of Canadian cannabis consumers prefer organically grown products
- Significant European demand for organic cannabis
- Critical for therapeutic market and over-the-counter products
Organic cannabis is just as potent as cannabis grown using conventional methods, but it also includes health and safety benefits.
The cannabis plant is good for leeching toxins like heavy metals and radioactive materials from soil. So good in fact that manufacturers will often sew the fields around their plants with hemp to do just that.
That’s why anyone buying cannabis needs to know where it comes from, and why organic is so important.
Organic growing fixes that problem by controlling what goes into the soil.
Other benefits include superior flavour with better flavonoid and terpene production, less environmental impact from synthetic fertilizers, and less chance of contamination by dangerous pesticides or other chemicals.
The story so far
Rubicon Organics appeared on the scene in October 2018 and limped through the rest of the year after taking a drubbing for the first two months.
They’ve since turned their 2019 around by delivering on their promises, effectively becoming one of the nation’s largest organic growers.
Now at the end of trading today Rubicon closed at $3.09 a share with a genuinely respectable $111.5 million market cap.
They haven’t quite returned to their post IPO price of $3.60 yet, but we believe they’re undervalued because they are one of the few grown-up players right now in the cannabis space offering premium organic product in a market seemingly overrun by impulsive children.
—Joseph Morton
Full disclosure: Rubicon Organics is an Equity.Guru marketing client.
