How local cannabis cultivator is gearing up for pot sales
AKRON, Ohio (WJW) — With 29,000 square feet of production space, Klutch Cannabis in Akron is approved to go to 50,000.
But as the state prepares to legally sell recreational marijuana, the company will be asking for a license that would allow it to double that.
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The company harvests marijuana every single day and has sold out every single harvest since opening its doors for medicinal marijuana in 2019.
Issue 2, passed last November gives the state until June 7 to issue applications for anyone wanting to legally sell recreational marijuana. Just this week, a joint state House and Senate rules committee approved dual licensing, which means that the process can be streamlined for those companies, including Klutch, who are already licensed to sell medicinal marijuana.
And while recreational pot was not expected to be on store shelves until this fall, Rep. Jamie Callender, of Lake County, believes it is more likely it will be sold as soon as next month.
“It depends on the application it depends on the applicant it depends on what they are asking for,” said James Canepa, Superintendent of the Division of Cannabis Control.
If it happens as soon as mid-June, Klutch said they will be ready.
“Our primary job is to make sure whether it’s in June, as quick as it possibly could be or into the fall, we are going to be ready. And we are going to be ready,” said Pete Nischt, Vice President of Compliance and Communication for Klutch.
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“We are working on increasing production capacity we are staffing up we are re-training we are looking at our product portfolio and making sure that we are delivering the highest quality most consistent products that we can,” said Nischt.
Also gearing up for the coming sale of legalized recreational marijuana is the Cleveland School of Cannabis, where students are taught every facet of the industry from cultivation to lab work, to marketing.
“Every square footage is going to need a certain amount of employees to have the best quality product coming out of that, right, so if we say they’re going from 29,000-square-foot to 100,000-square-foot you can just do the multiplication on that. Say well, that’s times four times three that they’ll have to go in and beef up their production value — to be able to do that and it’s gonna take a lot of employees to be able to accomplish that,” said Kevin Greene the school’s vice president.
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“I hope the licenses are ready,” Greene added. “I hope the logistics are set so there’s not a big gap in it because we have seen that in Canada; right when that country went legal they ran out of cannabis pretty quickly because the demand is there, and they’re gonna be lining up at the doors,” added Greene.
Klutch, for one, said they will be ready.
“We have been planning for a long time so I think that we are going to hit the ground running no problem,” said Nischt. “We are poised as a market leader to deliver the high level of quality and customer service that we are known for here. That’s really what we are focusing on right now is scaling. How do we go from 160,000 patients to two million consumers.”
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