ATHOL — MassGrow CEO Andrea Cabral appeared before the town’s Selectboard last week to provide an update on developments at the cannabis company’s facility in the former Union Twist Drill building at 134 Chestnut Hill Ave. Cabral, the former Suffolk County Sheriff and state Secretary of Public Safety, is also CEO of Ascend Mass LLC, which plans to open a retail cannabis shop in Boston.
“In terms of licensure,” she told the board, “we received our provisional in May of 2019, and we passed what’s called our post provisional license inspection with Cannabis Control Commission, CCC, inspectors in October. We received our final license in November of last year.
“A final license authorizes a cultivation facility to essentially do everything, except sell or transport cannabis products. So, it allowed us to bring what are called genetics — seeds — into the facility, enter them into the metric, which is the system the state uses for inventory control from seed to sale. It also allows you to hire employees.”
Notably, the town approved MassGrow LLC’s plans to convert the former tool manufacturing plant into a marijuana cultivation facility in June of 2018. MassGrow, Cabral reminded the board, had held a four-day job fair last summer, creating a very large pool of candidates for employment.
“Hiring will be ongoing,” she said. “It’s cultivation, so it’s slow at first because you’re putting in your first planting and you have to wait for those plants to get to a certain age before you can harvest them. But thereafter you have rolling harvests, so you’re constantly growing what’s called more canopy – or filling your canopy space – with more plants and therefore you can hire more.”
Cabral said the company’s first round of hiring commenced on Nov. 14.
“We’re now preparing for what the Cannabis Control Commission calls post final license inspection,” she said. “There are a number of conditions we have to meet, and we’ll be fine with all of them, but among them are that all employees have to be registered marijuana establishment agents. Everyone who enters a facility, especially as an employee, has to be a registered agent.”
Potential employees, she explained, go through a “rigorous” background check.
“I think we had one exception in all the people that we hired,” she said. “And everyone else we hired has a registered agent card. They have to be renewed every year, so every year we pay for a round of background checks.”
Cabral went on to explain that once the post-final inspection license has been granted, MassGrow will receive a commence operations order.
“(That) allows you to do the two final things that the final license order did not allow you to do,” she said, “which is to transport and sell cannabis products. I think the timeline is you can commence operations within three days of receiving the order. And MassGrow will wholesale cannabis products to other cannabis retailers and will supply cannabis products to its own retail locations.”
Cabral also provided details regarding the 31 employees who have been hired thus far by MassGrow. She said 12 are women, 19 are men — “I keep a very close eye on that ratio,” she interjected. Eighteen are cultivators, there are three directors, three managers, one is a human resources officer, one is an inventory specialist, four security agents and a director of security.
“In February,” she continued, “we are hiring an additional six to seven trimmers. Thereafter, the hiring will increase, because right now we’re operating in phase one of the build-out; there are two more phases to come.”
Cabral said she had fulfilled her promise to hire locally, stating that eight hires are from Athol, six are from Orange, two each are from New Salem, Templeton, Greenfield and Royalston, and there is one each from Leominster, Millers Falls, Warwick, Winchendon, Holden, Acton and Worcester.
In response to a question from Town Manager Shaun Suhoski, Cabral said her organization’s ultimate hope is to create 300 jobs at the cultivation facility.
The MassGrow CEO also said the company will be renting office space at the Athol Credit Union at 527 Main St. and encouraging all employees to bank there.
With no other questions from the board, Cabral concluded: “We’re really getting there and I think it’s going to be great.”