TORONTO, May 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRESS RELEASE -- Aleafia Health Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary Emblem Cannabis Corp. has secured a Health Canada License Amendment for its Paris facility’s 30,000-square-foot Phase II expansion, entirely dedicated to the extraction, production, packaging and distribution of finished cannabis products.

“The Phase II expansion, our crown jewel, permits an exponential increase in our ability to produce and sell high-margin cannabis health and wellness products in the medical, adult-use and international markets,” said Aleafia Health CEO Geoffrey Benic. “The Paris facility’s state-of-the-art expansion, purpose built to meet EU-GMP standards, creates a unique competitive advantage with significant barriers to entry. Coupled with our ultra-low-cost outdoor cultivation, it sets us apart in the cannabis industry. This means greater breadth of formats, greater scale and automation, and ultimately higher margins as we utilize cannabis grown outdoors through our integrated production ecosystem.

“This breakthrough also accelerates our Cannabis 2.0 strategy and will allow us to produce new differentiated product formats. We have been preparing for months and have ordered equipment, completed formulations and have built up a large inventory of cannabis extracts to be used as input material for new formats for immediate use in the new facility. Now it’s time for execution.”

The Paris facility license amendment, granted on May 1, 2020, authorizes cannabis production in the entire expanded building. The company expects to commence production and packaging operations at the Phase II expansion in the next two weeks.

Production Ecosystem

The expansion will allow the company to process and package all flower cultivated at its Port Perry outdoor cultivation site and its Niagara Facility. The expanded production facility increases the company’s licensed extraction, packaging and processing area from 2,500 sq. ft. to 20,000 sq. ft. It features multiple automated packaging lines and rooms dedicated to the production of new product formats, along with in-house quality control analytical testing and R&D.

The expansion is purpose-built to meet European Union Good Manufacturing Practices (EU-GMP), which represents the highest standard of pharmaceutical-grade production in the world, and as a result provides the greatest possible access to global markets. Members of Aleafia Health’s senior management have previously led the build-out, certification and operation of multiple EU-GMP pharmaceutical production facilities.