
By Myrna Stark Leader
Excitement over cannabis legalization in 2018 and access to capital spurred major investments in indoor production facilities across Canada, yet cannabis sales have fallen short of early predictions. By December 2023, Health Canada reported 1,480,895 sq. m of indoor licensed cannabis growing area, down from a peak of 2,217,216 sq. m in May 2020. While there’s limited data on the exact number of vacant sites, innovators like groHERE in Edmonton see opportunity.
GroHERE is leveraging a 36,000 sq. ft. (3,345 sq. m) former indoor medicinal cannabis operation for vertical strawberry production. Albertans’ demand for the berries is growing, with more than 33 million pounds imported annually, mostly from the U.S. or Mexico.
When fully operational, the private company aims to produce 80,000 to 1 million lbs. of strawberries annually. GroHERE president and chief operating officer, Gord Fritz, says leasing the existing facility for five years with an option to renew for five more, made vertical strawberry production economically viable.
“It’s not easy to raise money for private companies and new ventures,” says Fritz. “The empty building had been renovated to produce medical grade marijuana for export into Europe and to Canada, a $12-million renovation, with at least $5 million worth of climate control systems, so we got a great facility at a good lease rate.”
With eight 2,000 sq.-ft. (186 sq. m) rooms and 15-foot cseilings (4.6 m), the retrofit for vertical production was about $180,000.
“We removed a couple things like vaults (legal requirements for cannabis) and installed refrigerated walk-in coolers for storing berries. It was essentially turn-key,” says Fritz.
Plants rotate vertically on long shelves, based on a design from Singapore, modified and customized in Alberta, resulting in five times the growing density compared to traditional one-level growing in indoor greenhouses. The real bonus is the facility’s existing heating and cooling equipment, helping meet a large day-to-day expense. Strawberries want ideal temperatures, 23 to 25 degrees Celsius during the day and 12 to 14 degrees at night.
“They require daily temperature change to create taste and flavour,”says Fritz. “If they don’t get cold, the plant doesn’t produce sugar and flavour, so our number one cost is cooling the building. Fortunately, the equipment that was installed is adequate for us.”
After 18 months experimenting in one test room to perfect the growing method, cultivars and conditions (LED light temperatures, times, humidity and nutrients), Fritz says they’ve ordered the equipment to build out their first full room.
“By January 2025, we should have all eight rooms in production or planting. Once that happens, we’ll be producing about one million pounds a year,” he says.
Fruit will be distributed through a South Okanagan fruit company with storage facilities in Edmonton, which should reduce the cost of transportation over imported berries.

Blake Ponuick, CEO (left) and Justin Valmont, chief product officer with Nourish Labs deliver precision fertigation to groHERE’s strawberry facility.
Innovation doesn’t stop there
GroHERE will be augmenting its facility with B.C.-based Nourish Labs’ automated precision nutrient formulation and delivery platform. Nourish Labs is a pioneer in precision fertigation.
“We will be seamlessly integrating our fertigation platform with the groHERE vertical conveyer system to control feedings, so it is fully autonomous,” says Blake Ponuick, CEO of Nourish Labs.
The system prototype was conceptualized by Nourish Labs chief product officer, Justin Valmont, 12 years ago in Vernon as Think Tank. Valmont gained expertise in growing cannabis for medical use after a severe car accident in 2010.
“I had 12 different fertilizers, 12 different supplements I would blend to feed these plants to try and optimize yield and quality. I had a notebook and in a large mixing vessel, I would prepare each fertilizer solution for the different plants,” says Valmont. “Half my day was spent blending and feeding plants. I thought there had to be a machine for this.”
Finding no inline system designed for recipe changes on the fly, and with a background in agriculture and interest in robotics, in 2012, he built and patented an automated batch fertilizer preparation system. His innovation was a finalist in the 2022 Okanagan Angel Summit in Kelowna.
Now, several generations later, the Nourish Labs system provides consistent pre-mixed, homogenized and ph-balanced nutrients with millilitre precision. Benefits include more predictable crops, quality assurance, real-time monitoring, automated reporting, reduced labour need and less human error. Plus, when combined with vertical growing in substrate, less water and fertilizer are required reducing effluent waste.
“We are seeing what’s coined Farmer 4.0 emerging, the next generation of farmers taking over the family businesses and farmers who are data-driven, educated and tech-savvy,” says Ponuick. “They’re saying ‘I’m not going to do things the way they were done traditionally, I’m going to automate and data is incredibly important.’”
The Nourish Labs platform is in use at several facilities, including a 30,000 sq.-ft. (2,787 sq. m) indoor cannabis operation in Vernon, running 24 hours a day, saving labour and fertilizer costs and water, while helping mitigate impact on the environment.
“A customer in Drayton, Alberta, was forced to evacuate their operation due to wildfire in 2023. They could have lost their crop, but our system fed and watered the plants autonomously for 12 days, enabling a successful harvest,” says Ponuick.

The UBCO greenhouse is home to a new plant nutrition optimization project.
More innovation to come through research
Earlier this year, Nourish Labs was one of 13 companies to receive funding from the B.C. Centre for Agritech Innovation and Pacific Economic Development Canada. The $260,000 R&D project, in collaboration with UBC Okanagan (UBCO), will study optimizing plant nutrition.
Over the next 10 to 12 months, UBCO’s Dr. Susan Murch and her team will combine the precision of the Nourish Labs fertigation system with the UBCO-built system, which can measure 260 different plant growth regulators (triggers inside the plant that make it grow.)
“In this case, there was just a good merge between basic research, applied product development and the system development,” says the professor of chemistry.
The goal is to hydroponically feed strawberries and wine grapes inside the climate-controlled greenhouse the exact nutrients, in the exact quantity the plants require, using the Nourish Labs system for autonomous growing. This approach optimizes crop production and reduces nutrient runoff into the environment.
Murch thinks this kind of system has broad spectrum application in other indoor crops, particularly horticulture.
“Cannabis is a high-value crop to afford the research, but the lower-value crops that are more high-risk might actually be the ones that benefit longer term,” says Murch, who’s spent thirty years working to crack the code of plant nutrition.
Back at groHERE, Fritz is closely watching all research results since he already likes Nourish Labs’ scalability for strawberry production.
“While it’s designed to run a large facility, you don’t need to buy all the equipment up front as we work through capital realities. We don’t want to buy something and then underutilize it,” he says, adding that the Nourish Labs modular system can expand as the strawberry facility grows.
Ponuick is confident the research will pay off.
“Cannabis isn’t easy to grow— different cultivars, different strains, so it’s imperative that the environment be fully controlled : temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, light intensities, plant nutrients and so on. With these facilities, designed to adapt to and create any environment, now you can potentially bring in any crop. Our mission is to have an impact on food production and security globally.”