The President and CEO of Aphria is celebrating the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada.
Vic Neufeld was at a barbeque hosted for company investors, staff and friends in Leamington.
He says the ramp up to full production is well underway, but there have been hiccups.
He says they've been growing medical marijuana up to now and are changing over to the recreational market.
He says phases four and five of their expansion should be ready in early 2019.
"If I had to choose a date I'd say by May of 2019, maybe June, we'll be in a position that no other licensed producer in Canada will compete with us on price, quantity and quality"
Large crowd at the Aphria legalization of marijuana celebration, Leamington, October 17, 2018 (by AM800's Peter Langille)
Neufeld says the company has already helped with the employment situation in Leamington.
"In Leamington our workforce both salaried and hourly is close to 500. But I can tell you that by Christmas even with the level of automation that we have introduced in our Part four expansion, we are probably going to be closer to 700"
He's not concerned that no Aphria products are showing up on the Ontario Cannabis Store website.
"Today is day one, there's a lot of wrinkles I tell you Ontario will get it right a lot of moving parts I mean they've got Shopify behind them they've got some solid IT infrastructure and wireframing, we're not concerned"
Neufeld says their full production will be about 255,000 kilograms per year, or about 20,000 kilograms a month.