Business Chief North America June 2020

CANOPY GROWTH CORPORATION
224
“THE RECREATIONAL
MARKET IS WHERE
THE MAJOR PART OF
OUR BUSINESS NOW
COMES FROM”
—
Matthew Sly,
Logistics Director, Canopy Growth
by enforcement agencies because
it decoupled pot from the illegal
drug trade controlled by criminals.
Cannabis for recreational use was
legalised by the Canadian government
in October 2018, opening a
completely new market opportunity to
the already well-established industry
leader Canopy Growth and its subsidiaries,
Tweed Inc (which grows the
plants) and Spectrum Therapeutics
(which supplies medical formulations).
Today, Canopy is the world’s biggest
producer and distributor of cannabis
and employs some 3,500 people.
From growing sites all around Canada,
some under glass producing up to five
harvests a year, some in open fields
yielding a single harvest, the bulk product
is brought in armoured trailers to
the processing and packing plant at
Smiths Falls.
It was in the run-up to legalisation
that Matthew Sly was appointed
Logistics Director of the company.
At that point the company employed
just 150 people, he recalls, and had no
formal logistics department. Until then
it had been comparatively simple as all
operations were out of a single site at
JUNE 2020