“We started 6 years ago in algae, hydroponic lettuce, hydroponic peppers at University of Guelph. Our journey was never cannabis to begin with. Cannabis showed up all hot and bothered last year. Now it is under some stress because people are realizing growers will ultimately have excess capacity and we are efficiency improvement for them to maintain margins as they shrink…” States Sam Kanes, VP of Business Development and Director at CO2 GRO Inc. (TSXV: GROW), in an interview with InvestorIntel Corp. CEO Tracy Weslosky.
Tracy Weslosky: Let us start by congratulating you. News just out, your Michigan Flower grow trials have just come in. Can you talk to us a little bit about this?
Sam Kanes: Sure. It has been going on for 3 months now. We have had 5 trials do date. All of them show outstanding acceleration of growth and therefore value to future customers of ours. They came in Michigan, the Kalamazoo area. That is the number 3 growing area in the U.S. in terms of greenhouses. A lot of those are flowers. Our first U.S. representative that is with us now full-time as of this week, courtesy of raising some money, is in Kalamazoo. He is going to start there, work his way through Michigan, Ohio and the U.S. Midwest making commercial revenue for us in flowers.
Tracy Weslosky: I will tell you, we love your trading symbol, GROW, G-R-O-W. Can you dumb this down for us a little bit, I had previously understood that say you have 4 crops of cannabis in a greenhouse that you would then have 5 by utilizing the CO2 GRO patented technology. Let us start there. Can you correct me and help our viewers understand GROW better?
Sam Kanes: Cannot correct you because you are accurate. You are also accurate, by the way, the flowers. If you have a 3 month month cycle, we can make that 2 months. You add additional crops in the world of flowers as well as anything else that you want to mature faster than you are otherwise doing. Lettuce we have said now is probably 2 extra crops in California with confidence. They grow 4. We believe we can grow 6 because they are 99% leaves and leaves are what we grow the best and the fastest with our technology.
Tracy Weslosky: You really had a lot of foresight to get into this particular sector because you can take advantage of the cannabis sector and agribusiness. Is that correct?
Sam Kanes: No. We started 6 years ago in algae, hydroponic lettuce, hydroponic peppers at University of Guelph. Our journey was never cannabis to begin with. Cannabis showed up all hot and bothered last year. Now it is under some stress because people are realizing growers will ultimately have excess capacity and we are efficiency improvement for them to maintain margins as they shrink on a go forward basis down towards other growers of other commodities like flowers and corn and cotton.
Tracy Weslosky: Sam I understand that CO2 GRO’s most competitive advantage, the key word here is greenhouses. Is that correct?
Sam Kanes: That is not quite correct. Greenhouses come in all shapes and sizes. Some that use CO2 gas will help a little bit in terms of their incremental value. They are averaging about 33% more yield when they add CO2 gas in their greenhouses, but most greenhouses worldwide are porous or in fact open air, like California’s, which we visited a month ago. There you have a million square foot greenhouse, it has not wall. It has not glass. It has no structure. It is wide open. You cannot use CO2 gas in there…to access the complete interview, click here
Disclaimer: CO2 GRO Inc. is an advertorial member of InvestorIntel Corp.
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