Glass House Brands has purchased the former Houweling’s Tomatoes property near Camarillo for $93 million in cash and stock considerations.
The Long Beach cannabis company bought the 160-acre property in Ventura County for less than the original asking price of $118 million, Glass House said in a release.
The property in unincorporated Ventura County at 645 W. Laguna Road consists of six greenhouses and two packing houses totaling about 5.5 million square feet. The seller was Houweling’s Tomatoes, which shut down its tomato and cucumber growing operation starting early last month and laid off nearly 500 employees.
Glass House Chief Executive Kyle Kazan said the final purchase price kept an additional $25 million on his company’s balance sheet.
“We can now commence the first phase of the facility’s conversion and licensing, which will dramatically increase our cultivation capacity,” Kazan said in a statement.
Phase one of the project will have renovations made to two of the six greenhouses. Upgrades to the buildings will include automated nutrient delivery and irrigation systems; an improved HVAC system to optimize climate conditions; and installation of black-out curtains, a high-density gutter system, dry rooms and processing facilities.
The upgrades are expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year.
“Our massive Southern California facility has the scale and the tools necessary for us to combine the highest quality with the lowest cost of production along with sustainable, environmentally friendly and responsibly grown craft cannabis,” Kazan added in his statement.
Graham Farrar, co-founder and president of Glass House Brands, told the Pacific Coast Business Times in a story from early August that the 5.5 million square feet of growing space on the property would make it the largest cannabis greenhouse in California.