From roses to weed: Apopka flower grower moves into the medical marijuana business
APOPKA — There are roses outside the building where the marijuana is grown, planted nearby beyond a tall chain-link fence.
Inside the building, medical marijuana plants grow and are harvested. There’s a room for labeling and a kitchen for the eventual production of edibles.
Bill Dewar, whose dad started Dewar Nurseries off Keene Road in the early 1960s, is a partner in Sanctuary Medicinals in Florida, which runs the Apopka marijuana cultivation facility. It is one of the latest entries into the growing medical marijuana business in the state.
While his nursery is known for roses, Dewar said flowers and marijuana aren’t that far apart, botanically speaking.
“It’s not as different as people would think,” Dewar said. “The anatomy of plants isn’t that different.”
He does note the need for security and precautions for growing medical marijuana. A guard is posted at the gate to the marijuana operation, controlling who enters the property.
Marijuana plants grow under bright lights in several rooms of the main building there. The crop hangs and dries in another part of the building. Workers in a different room make “pre rolls,” a smokable medicinal option that a stoner might call a joint.
Sanctuary recently opened its first medical marijuana dispensary in Florida at 5381 International Drive in Orlando and plans to continue expanding across the state.
“It was the closest to where the production was, and it was easy for everybody to start, and we really wanted to get our feet on the ground,” Nicholas Satmary, Sanctuary’s director of operations, said on a tour of the Apopka property. “It’s a great location, too.”
CEO Jason Sidman, also the head of Sanctuary companies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, anticipates having 10 dispensaries in Florida this year. The list of cities where dispensaries are planned include Tampa, Jupiter, West Palm Beach and Jacksonville.
They will serve a growing number of consumers: there were more than 533,750 qualified patients in Florida as of April 16, up from 333,810 about the same time last year, according to the Office of Medical Marijuana Use.
The current setup in Apopka can produce enough medical marijuana for 12 dispensaries right now, but there’s room to grow, according to Sidman. The cultivation building is 57,000 square feet, but only 31,000 of it is operational, Sidman said.
“On that 17 acres, our main plan is to have approximately 1.2 million square feet under cultivation,” Sidman said.
It employs more than 30 people, and that number could grow to about 80 in the next year, Satmary said. The starting wage is about $12 to $14 an hour, he said.
“We are constantly hiring,” Satmary said. “The good thing is that not a lot of people have experience in this industry, so when you first come in, you have the opportunity to really go anywhere you want.”
The Orlando dispensary has eight employees.
The Apopka operation got the go-ahead from the state in 2019, and after working out of another building on the same property, began in its new space there around the start of this year, Dewar said.
He did not disclose the start-up cost but said it was not cheap and neither would be the future buildouts.
But Dewar said he thinks the medicinal side of cannabis has great benefits for patients.
“We felt we could be good performers in the cannabis arena,” Dewar said.
