TWD 35million O/S, MJ sells start Thursday! OTTAWA, April 21, 2014 /CNW/ - Tweed Marijuana Inc. (TSXV:TWD.V - News) is pleased to update that forecast demand for medical marijuana from its wholly owned subsidiary Tweed Inc. ("Tweed") is greater than initial company forecasts, based on registration and application information to date. Particularly, data from registrations predict a potentially greater demand than the Company had initially projected. Although there is no guarantee that medical marijuana demand based on registrations to date will necessarily translate into increased realized demand in the form of customer orders, Tweed will be intensifying its construction and production program to bring forward capacity not originally anticipated until the end of 2015. This will require an increase in capital expenditures and construction related expenses.
In addition to Tweed's core production rooms including the mother room, vegetative room, seed room, and drying room, Tweed has 3 operational grow rooms in place, where cannabis plants are sent to flower and become medicine. Each grow room is anticipated to generate approximately 500,000 grams of medical marijuana annually. Under Tweed's intensified construction plan, a further 3 rooms with similar production capacity are expected to be in place by August 31st, 2014, with a further 6 rooms in place by December 31st, 2014.
With the intensification of its construction schedule, Tweed will move from a currently anticipated annual maximum production capacity of 1.5 million grams per year to 6 million grams per year by the end of 2014. Tweed has a maximum of 15 million grams of annual production permitted by Health Canada within the currently approved structure. Production lags production capacity as the plants require between eight and twelve weeks of flowering time in the growing rooms. The time variation in the growing rooms is related primarily to the strains under production. With 25 strains currently in production, and an additional 60 strains to initiate, ?Tweed believes that it will offer an industry leading selection for the market by the end of 2014.
In the immediate term, Tweed is appreciative of the number of applications that have been received from patients looking to Tweed to be their trusted supplier of quality medical marijuana and expects to ship its first order on April 24th, 2014. In order to ensure sufficient supply to continue to serve its existing customers, Tweed will be prioritizing access to medical marijuana to customers who have already been registered or have submitted an application to Tweed prior to April 21st. While Tweed will continue to accept new applications, we will not proceed to register new customers until we can be certain that we have sufficient supply to meet demand. Tweed will ensure that all customers waiting to be registered are aware of their status and will work hard to keep existing and prospective customers informed as we move forward to build capacity and make new strains and supply available to our customers.
In order to continue to drive medium term demand in the sector, Tweed has commenced educational programs and hired initial staff to liaise with the medical community in order to bridge the information and research gap in order to facilitate the acceptance of medical marijuana as a treatment under appropriate circumstances and for relevant indications.
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