With people clamouring for cannabis, Matica Enterprises is in just the right place (literally!) to provide premium products and grow its sales.
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As Canada struggles to meet the huge demand for legal marijuana, Boris Ziger and his team are stepping up to fill the gap – in a big way. Their Canadian cannabis company, Matica Enterprises, is focused on creating the highest-grade product possible for a variety of smokable strains, along with extracts and oils for on-trend edibles and medicinal creams.

The $3.7-trillion wellness market is forecast as the next frontier for cannabis, and the versatility of CBD and THC extracts means that cannabis can be merged with practically any health product, be it edible or topically applied to the body. So the demand for quality certainly is there, says Ziger, Matica CEO and Chair.

“My feeling is in addition to edibles and smokables, topicals are going to be huge. I’ve got my mom asking about it. And cannabis works. Anyone who has tried it knows it works.”

That was part of the draw for Ziger, a former stock broker with more than 20 years’ experience in securing venture capital for new companies. He likes to be early in the game and has a keen nose for potential growth (although he doesn’t like the smell of pot and just released a mist in a spray bottle that eliminates the odour).

“Somebody said, ‘you should look into cannabis.’ And I laughed because I don’t really smoke. I’m a sailor, I prefer rum. So I locked myself into a room for a couple of weeks and learned everything I could.”

His tenacity to raise investment dollars has paid off. Now his excitement is focused on expanding from a 10,000-square-foot grow operation in Dorval, Quebec to a massive, new 200,000-square-foot facility he’s building in Hemingford, just one hour south of Montreal.

While Ontario has about 70 licenced producers, Matica is one of just 11 licenced producers in Quebec, a province with a mandate to source all their cannabis from within their borders. That means Matica is poised to exponentially increase its growing capacity to meet the demand for quality product – and it will have absolutely no trouble selling it.

The company now has space for cannabis yields and, interestingly, an ideal location for growing conditions. The new Matica property is made for growing the beautiful little green plants, Ziger says. “We have a 180-acre farm just south of Montreal in an area called Les Jardins. It’s farm country. This tiny little corner of Quebec gets the same sunlight hours as southern Ontario. It’s a perfect little microclimate.”

He’s starting out with one greenhouse, built specifically for cannabis with all the specialized lighting and irrigation, rather than a converted tomato greenhouse, for example. The plan is a one-million-square-foot facility on five acres, which will become five top-of-the-line greenhouses, with two completed later this year. His team is looking at different strains that thrive on dry conditions and sandy soils that can be recreated indoors.

“We are no strangers to pushing the envelope so we think we can pull it off,” he says. “Yes it’s a crazy business. If we can have 200,000 square feet of weed growing, we can sell it all in Quebec and if we can produce enough, and be able to produce it at around a dollar, and if you sell at $4 dollars, that’s pretty good.”

The property also has a gorgeous old Loyalist farmhouse featuring hand-cut logs, fireplaces and vintage stoves that could become a showroom for sampling and workshops. So the house and the greenhouses are being built on the eastern half of the property and the western half of the property is all cultivated land for growing outdoor cannabis.

“Your top-quality cannabis is going to be used for smoking,” explains Ziger. “It’s difficult to have smokable flowers that are really high-quality that are grown outdoors; there are just too many variables and there’s not enough control. But if you are making oils, it’s a little bit different; you can grow outdoors and still make a really high-quality oil.”

What sets Matica apart from competitors is the Quebec focus. Because the market is so large, the company isn’t concerned about anyone taking a slice out of the pot pie. Second, hydroelectricity is a lot cheaper in Quebec, which reduces the electrical costs of all the necessary grow lights. The Hemingford setup has direct power lines right on the property, whereas new operations starting on undeveloped land may wait years for the power lines they need to effectively run their business.

And the company is already building relationships in the European market where there is strong demand for Canadian cannabis, especially for natural health. Matica has an agreement with Yunify Natural Technologies, a cosmetic and nutraceutical research company out of Montreal and Vermont, to produce some unique proprietary products. Topical creams, soon to be released, are made with clay through an innovative cold-mix process. The cannabis oil is infused into superfine layers of clay for a time-release effect for longer healing.

Another bonus here is the clay base makes it versatile for product development. Matica can sell the clay and manufacturers can add the oil in the U.S. for white label distribution as well.

The really cool thing Yunify came up with, Ziger says, is the new spray mist, far superior to a traditional air freshener in every way. “We talked about the marijuana smell and how I didn’t like it. So they came up with an ionic neutralizer that breaks down the odour at the molecular level. So if someone is smoking cannabis and they don’t want the room to smell of cannabis or if they use it every day for medicinal purposes, and they don’t want to come to work smelling of cannabis, they can spray this and you end up with a really nice peppermint smell.”

Like most entrepreneurial companies in the cannabis space, Matica is tuned into market trends and being ready to deliver the next big thing. Ziger says the high-quality approach is the right fit for long-term success. His interpretation of the market is that smokables and edibles will evolve into a more refined market like scotch. People are going to be using it the same way they use alcohol. They have friends over for dinner and they have a couple of candies before dinner, then they wait for an hour and they start eating.

“It’s very much an adult sort of thing. They won’t want to get baked out of their mind – there is a small segment like that, but the majority won’t. It’s like alcohol; most people don’t drink to get completely smashed. They drink two or three to feel good. So if you find the balance of the right THC/CBD mix to create that experience, it would be very popular.”