Medpharm Iowa spokesman, Lucas Nelson, says the company’s facility in Des Moines will be ready to deliver medical marijuana products in December.
He says work has been right on schedule. “They are going just about as wonderfully as we could have hoped,” Nelson says. “We’ve got a couple of more pieces of equipment that are being installed and being trained on right now, but our grow facility is completely up and going. The extraction, processing and formulation side of it…is basically done.” He says they are getting the plants ready to extract the cannabis oil to make the products to sell.
“We got a number of production cycles already in motion. We’ll have a big harvest coming soon. That’ll be some of the fresh material that’ll be processed into final product,” Nelson says. Medpharm is a subsidiary of Kemin Industries. The company also won the rights to have two dispensaries to sell the medical marijuana.
“Our Windsor Heights and our Sioux City location are actually ahead of schedule on both — which is almost unheard of. I wouldn’t have been that surprise if we were behind, instead we are actually ahead of schedule,” according to Nelson. “So, that’s excellent.” He says they hope to have the dispensaries open in November to start some educational events.
“Open houses, kind of tours, explanations about the program. And again, if you are a patient, what the process is going to be like, what you should bring with you, what to expect, what sort of products are available, all those sorts of things, so that when the program truly goes live at the end of the month you are not going to have questions,” he says. “Hopefully most people won’t have questions, they are not going to have confusion, they’ll walk in and they’ll know what to expect.”
Other companies are running dispensaries in Council Bluffs, Waterloo and Davenport. He says it seems like those dispensaries are on target and haven’t fallen too far behind schedule. Nelson says they are at a bit of disadvantage in not having as many people on the ground as they are out of state operators.
Nelson says Medpharm has been working with them to help them get ready for the start of sales. “We’ve talked at length with them about training procedures and all that sort of thing that is obviously very important for patients, that they are getting the same information if they come into any dispensary. So there’s no confusion about products and what might work for what condition and what wouldn’t work,” Nelson says. The state law requires Medpharm to have the products ready for sale by December 1st.