The marijuana industry's first $1 billion "unicorn" startup is joining an influential stock index— a major milestone for the legal weed industry.
On March 14, The Globe and Mail reported that Canadian marijuana cultivator Canopy Growth is being added to the S&P/TSX composite index and will start trading later this month. Canopy Growth told The Globe and Mail it will be the index's first marijuana company.
Canopy Growth is the largest legal marijuana producer in the world. It grows, trims, processes, packages, and ships weed across Canada.
Take a look inside Canopy Growth's massive grow-op.
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Canopy Growth operates out of a once-abandoned Hershey chocolate factory in the small town of Smiths Falls, Ontario.
The company supplies the drug to nearly half of Canada's current medical marijuana patient base, about 40,000 people.
Bruce Linton, CEO of Canopy, founded the company because he thought a vertically integrated company — one that grows marijuana in addition to processing it for oils and other products and packaging it for shipment — would give him better control over quality.
Vertically integrated companies are also able to offer their products more cheaply, since they cut out the middle men in growing and distribution.
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