KITCHENER, Ont. — Waterloo Brewing — Ontario’s largest Canadian-owned brewery — has secured its research license from Health Canada to begin developing cannabis-infused beverages (CIBs). The company is on track to be ready to commercially produce such products for 2020.
Industry estimates suggest the beverage-cannabis market could be valued at an estimated $1.5 billion.
“The cannabis market has garnered a great deal of investor interest and, after an in-depth review of our strategic options, the company is positioning itself to be a major producer of CIBs and to take full advantage of this new and developing beverage category,” says George Croft, president and CEO, Waterloo Brewing. “We plan to be the production partner of choice for the beverage-cannabis business.”
Russell Tabata, Chief Operating Officer at Waterloo Brewing, says due to technical infrastructure issues related to the licensing and commercial production of cannabis-infused beverages, “we will be one of the few beverage-production facilities capable of producing these products. We have the equipment, the scale, the technical know-how and the speed to be able to pull this off in this extremely tight timeframe.”
