A £10 million medical cannabis facility in the Midlands, run by Derbyshire-based Dalgety, is the first in the UK with EU GMP certification to cultivate, manufacture, and distribute high-grade cannabinoids.
The 30,000 sq ft site, protected by ex-military guards and 150 security cameras, ensures a consistent domestic supply of prescription cannabis, addressing shortages caused by international imports. CEO James Leavesley said their process delivers products to patients in weeks.
Dalgety’s first shipment, equivalent to 500 prescriptions, was sent out last month as the firm seeks to break the stigma surrounding medical cannabis.
The 30,000 sq ft site, protected by ex-military guards and 150 security cameras, ensures a consistent domestic supply of prescription cannabis, addressing shortages caused by international imports. CEO James Leavesley said their process delivers products to patients in weeks.
Dalgety’s first shipment, equivalent to 500 prescriptions, was sent out last month as the firm seeks to break the stigma surrounding medical cannabis.
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00:00My name is James Leavesley and I work for Dalgety, it's a UK cannabis cultivator.
00:04So when the law changed back in 2018, we were looking at growing cannabis for a variety of different reasons.
00:11Not necessarily medicinal cannabis, but just looking at the plant in general and what it can do,
00:16and the fact it was the first time you could cultivate it in the UK.
00:19And the more research that we did, we looked across markets throughout the world,
00:24in Canada and Israel and other places that were leading the research,
00:28we actually found the incredible properties that the medical cannabis flower holds.
00:32Dalgety were founded five years ago and it's taken us four and a half years
00:37to actually get to a point that we're fully licensed by the medical regulator and the Home Office
00:44to cultivate medical cannabis in the UK.
00:46And we're the only one with a license that can have an API product as the dried flower
00:51available for prescription in the UK.
00:54Products that are available tend to be of very low quality because it costs so much just to be able to import it.
01:01So that means that when patients are prescribed medical cannabis
01:04and they come up for their repeat prescriptions, often it's out of stock or not available
01:09or even if it has to be imported, it can take 12 to even 20 weeks just to be able to get it into the UK.
01:16We finished the build here two and a half years ago.
01:18Each one of the rooms has been temperature mapped.
01:21And just depending on which stage that the product is in, we're in a flower room here at the moment.
01:27So we've got the lights above me. These are energy efficient LED lights.
01:32And there's no greater difference anywhere in the room greater than 5%.
01:35And that's really important to maintain consistency throughout the canopy.
01:40We can measure the humidity here to within one degree and the temperature to within 0.5 degrees C.
01:47And we can actually put seasons into each of the rooms to be able to get the best performance out of the plant.
01:53The facility that we've got here, we can't obviously give away any of the locational details,
01:58but it's incredibly high security.
02:01We've got ex-military personnel here 24-7, a series of access control points
02:06and over 150 CCTV cameras monitoring every corner here,
02:11which is incredibly important for security and the home office requirements to grow a product like this in the UK.
02:19There are actually over 1,300 different types of alarms that can go off in a facility like this.
02:25And that can be you leave the door open for longer than seven seconds,
02:28or if the humidity drops slightly out of spec,
02:32then the computer automatically picks up and corrects itself.
02:36But we have an alarm that notifies any of the growers that they might need to respond or monitor.
02:41And that's really important to be able to get a consistent product,
02:45not only throughout one batch, but batch on batch.
02:48So when a medical cannabis patient has a Dalgety product in the next few weeks,
02:52that that will be consistent in 12 months time, 24 months time and further into the future.
02:58And the benefit of having all of the licenses in-house is it means that as soon as we finish processing
03:03and manufacturing the medicine in its final form, we can then send it straight to our distributor.
03:08And when it's finished our processing and has all the quality tests within a month's time,
03:13it can be within a patient's hands.
03:15This is vastly different to all of the products being imported at the moment.
03:18They can often take 12 weeks just to get an import permit from the MHRA.
03:22And then to go through all the various customs and clearances can often take another 12 weeks on top of that.
03:27We, being located in the UK, can cut out all of that supply chain complexity and issues
03:33and we can get it straight to the patient that has a prescription in under a month's time.
03:38I'm Brady Green and I'm the head grower for Dalgety Medical Cannabis.
03:42I started in the medical cannabis industry in Canada, my home country, about 2014.
03:49And I've been in the cannabis space ever since.
03:52So I oversee the grow team here.
03:54Our day-to-day varies quite a lot depending on different stages of growth and what needs to be done.
04:01Our crop cycle runs about 5 months in total.
04:05So it takes about 2 weeks in the propagation stage for rooting, about 2 weeks in veg,
04:11and then flowering takes about 7 to 12 weeks depending on variety.
04:16From there it takes another 2 weeks to dry and 2 weeks to cure.
04:20A little bit of time to trim.
04:22And then once it's packaged, we can get our product to patients within a matter of weeks.
04:28At my previous facility in Canada, I operated a 12-acre greenhouse or glasshouse.
04:35We had about 450 employees just at the glasshouse.
04:39We produced about 50,000 kilos a year.
04:42Yields are obviously very important for commercial viability.
04:46But for us, we don't cut any corners in terms of quality of production.
04:52If we're growing for quality, we can get good yields.
04:55But if you're growing for big yields, you don't necessarily get good quality.
04:59Something we are really trying to deliver to the patients is really top-shelf flower products.
05:06A lot of people are surprised by that, that it's even possible or even legal.
05:11I think that's part of it. It's important to discuss it and break the stigma of this plant a little bit.
05:18It's the opposite of evil and dangerous, and hopefully it can provide a lot of assistance for people.