30,000 Square Meters Of Ħal Far Land To Become “Cluster” For Cannabis Business
Pictured left: Minister for the Economy Chris Cardona
Around 30,000 square metres of industrial and agricultural land in Ħal Far has been earmarked to become the heart of Malta’s budding medical cannabis industry.
The site will become home to 10 new businesses that have been given approval by Malta Enterprise to begin operations. Once they set up shop on the island, the new site will facilitate everything from the cultivation of small batches of medical cannabis to the extraction and manufacturing of medicinal products for the companies.
“We have an area, which can be confined, of around approximately 30,000 sqm,” Minister for the Economy Chris Cardona told Lovin Malta. “Malta Enterprise’s idea, which is supported by myself as the minister responsible for Malta Enterprise, is to have a cluster built in a way that can also help these investors, these companies, and these researchers use certain facilities jointly.”
Pictured above: Ħal Far. The site is set to be on the North-Eastern side of the industrial estate
The cannabis cluster is set to be located on the outskirts of Ħal Far
The small Maltese village in the south is already home to pharmaceutical companies like Arrow Pharm Malta, but will now be the stomping grounds of some of the most advanced researchers and technological equipment in medical cannabis today.
One Australian company, MGC Pharma, had already announced that it will be operating a 4,000 square metre site in Malta, a site that will be used to cultivate and produce medical cannabis.
Beyond producing medicines, the new cluster is also going to be ground zero for a lot of Research and Development into medical cannabis on the island, and will become a focal point of production for the Maltese industry.
From their Maltese base, companies will be able to export their medicinals into the European market, a market set to be worth over €2 billion in just a few years.
Other officials confirmed that the government was also looking at other options to increase the factory space for medical cannabis companies on the island, with one way forward consisting of factories with unused grounds or facilities leasing the area to medical cannabis companies to use.
What do you think of Ħal Far becoming central to the European medical cannabis market?
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