Australia-headed Algae.Tec Ltd, a specialist algae, and medicinal cannabis producer focused on developing technology using waste carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce commercial quantities of a range of plant derived products for use in diverse sectors has announced the first project to be funded under its Collaboration and Licensing Agreement with Winter Garden Biosciences, a developer of cannabinoid pharmaceutical products based on proprietary, heirloom hemp varieties only available in Uruguay.
According to a statement, the project entails the development of an initial crop of active heirloom cannabis, without genetically altered structures and with naturally high levels of cannabinoids. The crop will be planted over 10 acres (≈ 4.4 ha) commencing September 2017, which marks the beginning of the Spring growing season in Uruguay.
This is an exciting time for Algae.Tec as we commence our Collaboration and Licensing Agreement with Winter Garden. The crop program has the potential to create significant value for both companies and the development of our new growing technologies and combined products have the potential to treat a number of unmet medical and nutritional needs globally, said Peter Hatfull, Managing Director for Algae.Tec in a statement.
Algae.Tec and Winter Garden will derive revenue from the harvesting and sales of the initial crop through the sale of oils, seed extracts, combined algae and fibre products. It is expected that 100 kg of heirloom variety seeds will be planted over the 10 acres (≈ 4.5 ha) as part of the joint Algae.Tec – Winter Garden research and collaboration arrangements.
The targeted yields per acre are 100 kg of oils, seed extracts and fibre products. The returns will be split 75:25 between Algae.Tec and Winter Garden after cost recovery.
The initial 10 acre (≈ 4.4 ha) grow out program can be expanded to approximately 150 acres (≈ 60.7 ha) at Winter Garden’s existing facilities, including outdoor crops, greenhouse crops, and indoor crops. Winter Garden has access to over 1 000 acres (> 404 ha) of arable land that can rapidly be deployed as the companies move to commercial scale operations.
A unique jurisdiction
According to Algae.Tec, Uruguay is the only jurisdiction in the world that currently allows commercial registration of cannabis cultivars without the “cumbersome and limiting restrictions” on THC and cannabiniod content. This will be a key pivotal difference in Algae.Tec’s position in the medicinal cannabis market moving forward through its collaboration with Winter Garden.
The heirloom cannabis varietals allow Algae.Tec to grow, harvest, extract products and sell these unique and valuable plants that can be used to create new high potency CBD products in Winter Garden’s world class Uruguayan laboratories or to generate immediate revenue through sales of seeds, oils, combined algae products and hemp fiber to North American and European markets.
Furthermore, according to Algae.Tec, these genetically unaltered cannabis plants require fewer pesticides, herbicides, and fertilization than nearly all of their genetically modified counterpart varieties found in North America.
