By Nicolas Jose Rodriguez via El Planteo.
For centuries, countries in Latin America have lagged behind the world’s central economies in terms of economic growth and social inclusion. Unequal terms of exchange in imports and exports, low levels of industrialization, political unrest, socioeconomic inequality, and macroeconomic crises, are just some of the factors that sustain high unemployment levels and deepen rural uprooting.
In this context, public policies often aim to stimulate the addition of value to local commodities sustainably and transfer technology to producers to promote innovation. Thus, in the Province of Jujuy, in Northwest Argentina, pharmaceutical-grade cannabis is already public policy.
Cannava Avatar SE is the first state-owned vertically-integrated company in the Americas dedicated to the production at scale of medicinal cannabis. The firm already provides qualified employment opportunities and seeks to export EU GMP-certified medicinal cannabis produced with low costs involved and competitive margins, leaving a carbon footprint of 0.
Cannava: A Trip To The Future
A zig-zagging cornice jungle road leads to El Pongo farm, where Cannava is located. The visit to the internationally certified crop reveals a "hidden" green giant in the Yungas jungle.
The provincial government invested more than USD 25 million in the firms that employ roughly 200 people, 65% of whom are women, and supplies the province with full-spectrum cannabis oil for $12.
“80% of what is invested are capital investments in technology that generate benefits. We invested USD 3 million only in one quality control lab, and in total, we invested USD 10 million in post-harvest control," Gastón Morales, president of the company, explained exclusively to El Planteo.
"Let's keep in mind that we are talking about one of the most sophisticated medical cannabis complexes in South America, unique in the world because it is a state-owned company," added Morales, a Lawyer, and specialist in Environmental Law who graduated from the University of Buenos Aires.
And the investments are noticeable at every step.
Steel-frame structures from top to bottom, white and smooth cement floors, constant AC, vacuum chambers, colored lights, red, and green, caps, slippers, white gloves, switches, ventilation tubes, acrylic windows, measuring instruments embedded in the walls, cameras, “Made in Canada” stainless steel tanks, and, “Made in Italy” drying chambers, professionals looking at screens next to what appears to be a giant printer [“it's a chromatograph”, they say later], everything, condensed in industrial warehouses the size of a decent American Mall.
The firm can produce 80 tons of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis derivatives. Once harvested, cannabis is trimmed inside a 65 feet-tall industrial warehouse where the air is filtered to ensure that there are no particles of soil or fungi floating …
Full story available on Benzinga.com
