Facility Overview
Our cultivation facility spans 5,480 m² of warehouse space and is designed for precision and consistency, ensuring premium quality in every harvest. The facility is equipped with state-of-the-art technology from industry-leading suppliers to optimise plant health and maximise quality.
The site will produce 7 tons of cannabis annually, equating to approximately 750 g per square metre, enabling us to meet high market demand while maintaining superior consistency.
Flower Rooms and Canopy
The facility houses 11 flower rooms, providing a total of 1,646 m² of flowering canopy. This configuration allows for perpetual harvest cycles, ensuring a fresh and continuous supply of high-quality cannabis.
Lighting Systems
The cultivation environment is supported by 1,015 flowering grow lights and 1,978 under-canopy lights. Utilising advanced lighting technology from Fohse and Favan, we deliver optimal light spectrums to support peak cannabinoid and terpene production.
Irrigation and Fertigation
An advanced irrigation system designed by Demeter Designs ensures precise and consistent nutrient delivery, supporting stronger and healthier plants.
The fertigation system is supplied by a validated reverse osmosis (RO) system with a storage capacity of 60,000 litres of RO water. Water is filtered to below 5 microsiemens, allowing complete control over the ions delivered to the crop. Through leaf sap analysis, we determine the specific nutritional requirements of each strain during its different growth phases. This enables the creation of custom fertiliser blends tailored to individual strains, reducing fertiliser wastage and supporting the healthiest possible crops.
Facility Automation
The entire facility is fully automated through Growlink, optimising operational efficiency, minimising human error, and maximising plant potential. Growlink controls all critical systems, including HVAC, CO₂ delivery, and substrate sensors. The ability to trend data across multiple devices allows for precise, informed, and data-driven decision-making.
Water Quality
High-quality water is maintained through a Moleaer nanobubble system, which enhances oxygen levels, prevents pathogens, and optimises overall water quality. This system allows control of dissolved oxygen levels throughout the entire irrigation system, down to the drippers, while also protecting irrigation lines, drippers, and tanks from scaling that could lead to microbial growth.
The nanobubble generator supplies over 20 ppm of dissolved oxygen to the substrate, creating an oxygen-rich root zone that supports healthier plants and higher yields.
HVAC and Air Quality
The facility is equipped with an advanced HVAC system featuring three stages of filtration, with the final stage consisting of HEPA filtration. This system removes vectors of all sizes. Magnahelic gauges are installed across each filtration stage, allowing informed decisions on filter changes when required, including ahead of the Planned Preventative Maintenance schedule.
Each room is designed with low return ducts and overhead air supply, ensuring uniform airflow and preventing dead spots that could increase pathogen pressure. The HVAC system in the processing area has been designed, built, and is currently undergoing validation to ensure compliance with Grade D air quality requirements.
Processes
Ultra Clean facility
We maintain an ultra-clean facility, adhering to pharmaceutical-grade sanitation protocols for unmatched purity. We ensure this is possible by validating our cleaning procedures and processes, we also meticulously choose the cleaning products we use to ensure they align with the EU Pharmacopeia guidelines.
EUGMP Facility
Our GMP-compliant processing ensures every product meets the highest standards of safety, consistency, and quality. Our team of compliance experts have a range of experience all the way to sterile production. With all this knowledge coupled together it ensures we operate within regulations and is an example of how compliance is one of our main key contributors to what will make Biogenetics Labs world class.
All hand trimmed flower
Every flower is hand-trimmed, preserving its natural structure, potency, and aesthetic appeal. By hand trimming we also have an opportunity to up skill and provide jobs within a region with a very low employment rate, this gives back to the testament that we are here to help and grow local communities where we can.
FAQs
What makes our facility unique in Africa compared to other EU-GMP operations?
Lower production costs enable hand trimming and the ability to hire more staff to ensure quality.
What innovative design or workflow choices set our facility apart?
A fully indoor site using state-of-the-art cultivation and post-harvest methods.
How do we ensure consistency in the finished medical product?
Our stringent QMS and fully indoor design allow us to replicate batch after batch by maintaining full control over the environment and processes.
Why we invest in automation?
Automation allows the facility to remain in an optimal state even after hours. The ability to program and remotely monitor every critical aspect of the operation supports this.
What problems does our facility solve that greenhouse or smaller indoor facilities struggle with?
Greenhouses lack full control over light, temperature, humidity, CO₂, air quality, and fertigation. Smaller indoor facilities often lack the correct infrastructure and scalability, limiting their ability to supply medium to large batches to the market.
How is EU-GMP embedded in everything we do?
The site was built with a single objective: achieving EU-GMP certification. Nothing within the facility is accidental; everything was meticulously planned and executed to meet the highest standards in the world.
How do we support staff skill development, retention, and regional employment?
All current staff are African, with the majority based in Johannesburg. Our philosophy focuses on training staff across all related cultivation activities. Every staff member has received training on 39 SOPs.
How do we approach scalability?
Scalability has been a focus from the outset. The post-harvest area has been built to accommodate additional production rooms. While increased production often leads to a drop in quality, the facility is designed as three internal units under one roof, allowing each phase to be compartmentalised. This protects quality and enables staff to remain focused on fewer tasks at any given time. With a total of 11 flower rooms, the facility can consistently deliver different genetics to the market.