4Front Ventures Corp. (CSE: FFNT) (OTCQX: FFNTF) (“4Front” or the “Company“) announced today that it has entered into definitive agreements with both the land owner and an affiliate of Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc., (“IIPR”) to build an up to 558,000 square foot cultivation and production facility in Illinois. This would mark the largest such facility in the state to date. In summary, the agreements provide for IIPR to acquire the land for $6.5m and fund the approximately $45m buildout of phase one of the facility which will be leased back to 4Front in the form of a 20-year lease with two five-year extensions at the Company’s option. Closing of the transaction is subject to securing appropriate county and state incentives, completion of standard due diligence, and other customary closing conditions.
4Front continues to penetrate in key adult-use markets with its proven portfolio of high-quality, affordable products. While the Company has already experienced significant success in Illinois through their Mission-branded dispensaries and existing cultivation-only facility, it is excited with the scope and scale of this new facility which will enable it to now introduce its full array of products into the market and catapult it to a top player in the State.
“Our thesis is simple.” noted 4Front CEO Leo Gontmakher, “Bring tried-and-true cultivation and manufacturing methods from Washington State to large adult-use markets like Massachusetts, Illinois and California. Washington State was and is a highly competitive battleground in which our facilities, over a six year period, honed processes to achieve significant efficiencies and cost savings across a wide array of products. It is over this period that our facilities were forced to learn how to make high quality product at below industry cost, enabling significant profitability despite plummeting wholesale prices. Over the last 18 months, we have had significant success transitioning our three cultivation/manufacturing facilities in Illinois and Massachusetts into the ‘Washington Way’.” Gontmakher continued, “Cultivation yields now meet or exceed those from our Washington facilities (greater than 370 grams/square foot and as high as 500 grams/square foot in Worcester) and our manufactured products have retained a similar cost structure to that of Washington. We are also thrilled with the demand for our high-quality, affordable manufactured products introduced in Massachusetts over the last year. We are incredibly excited and ready to compete at a larger scale in Illinois.”
The first phase of the buildout will constitute 258,000 square feet of building, comprising 65,000 square feet of flowering canopy and approximately 70,000 square feet of manufacturing space for the development of 4Front’s branded flower, edibles, tinctures, concentrates and other manufactured products. Phase 1 is expected to be operational by Q4 2022.
The subsequent phase(s) of the buildout will add an additional 300,000 square feet of facility to meet market demand. 4Front plans to hire more than 240 employees to its cultivation and production teams during Phase 1.
