MJBizMag July 2021 - 50

SCALE
HOW IT
SUITS YOU
The
Budweiser of
By Omar
Sacirbey
I
n 2002, Jake Van Wingerden bought
45 acres of land that included a
60,000-square-foot greenhouse in
Earleville, Maryland, where he started
Tidal Creek Growers. The company
produces bedding plants that are sold
at local and national gardening centers,
including Home Depot and Lowe's.
Today, Tidal Creek has 620,000 square
feet of heated greenhouse plus 17 acres of
shade houses and outdoor fields between
two facilities.
Now, Van Wingerden is replicating
his scaling act, this time with cannabis
flower. His company, SunMed Growers,
was one of 15 cannabis businesses to
win a cultivation license in 2016. It
started with roughly 70,000 square feet
of greenhouse but is well on its way to a
half-million square feet.
" We have always taken the business
approach of being the Budweiser brand.
Plentiful, fully available, reasonably
priced and good-quality products. There
are other players in the marketplace
that are artisanal, handcrafted, top-shelf
products. That's not us. SunMed is about
scale and volume and reasonable prices, "
Van Wingerden said, noting that the
company sells anywhere from 500 to 700
pounds of biomass per week. " My motto
is, 'I'd rather make a little on a lot than a
lot on a little.' "
DETAILED MASTER PLAN
Van Wingerden intended to scale
SunMed from the get-go and started
with a detailed master plan that laid
out the final size of the facility. It
50 MJBizMagazine | July 2021
included locations for the
greenhouses, offices and
rooms for drying, curing
and processing as well as
electrical and plumbing
configurations.
" We did our site work,
utilities and underground to
accommodate that master
plan, " Van Wingerden said.
" We laid out a half-million
square feet from Day One. "
The first phase was a build-out of
Jake Van Wingerden
roughly 70,000 square feet of greenhouse
buildings. About 2½ years ago, SunMed
decided to start Phase 2, which included
a build-out of roughly 160,000 square
feet to be completed in late 2020 at a cost
of about $18 million.
The company has raised the capital
for Phase 3-a 250,000-square-foot
build-out-and started the permitting
and engineering work. " We intend two
years from today to be at a half-million
square feet. "
GAUGING DEMAND
Van Wingerden based the size of his
facility partly on the speed at which
Maryland's medical cannabis program
was growing and partly by looking at
other states.
" When we turned on the facility
from Phase 1, we immediately entered a
marketplace that was rapidly growing, "
Van Wingerden said of Maryland. " The
patient count and the monthly retail sales
count, it seems like every year or
18 months it doubled. "
A meticulous scaling plan
helped one Maryland medical
marijuana cultivator become a
greenhouse-growing giant
Cannabis
When looking
to other states for
comparisons, Van
Wingerden focused
on Arizona's medical
market because of
how the program was
designed, the way
patients were signed up
and the way businesses
were distributed across
the state.
" If you watch Arizona's marketplace,
it's grown exponentially-much
faster and much larger than anybody
anticipated. And so that gave me a lot
of confidence in making decisions to
scale because it takes two years to do
these projects, " Van Wingerden said.
" Those decisions two years ago are
what's happening today in the business.
And it was a great decision because
the increased production that we have
right now is being sucked up by our
marketplace. It's like a dry sponge. "
He also expects Maryland to open a
recreational cannabis market similar to
the one Arizona launched in January.
" The risk of building additional
production space is less because we
know the recreational market is on the
horizon, " he said.
LESSONS LEARNED
While Van Wingerden started with a
detailed plan for his multiphase scaling
project, he wasn't afraid to change things
midstream, depending on what he
learned from one phase to the next. After
MJBizMag July 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of MJBizMag July 2021
