KALAMAZOO TWP. — Cloud Cannabis Co. has acquired a 70,000-square-foot commercial grow facility in Kalamazoo Township from cannabis company KKind.
The acquisition allows Cloud Cannabis to be “fully vertical, which is key,” said John McLeod, co-founder and head of new markets for Cloud Cannabis.
The company also announced Thursday that it is starting a new cultivation partnership with Wonderbrett, a California-based cannabis brand known for pioneering grow techniques in the industry.
“We will continue to have a very large selection of flower options, but we’re also going to have the ability to be first-to-market with Wonderbrett products, and we’re really excited for that,” McLeod told MiBiz.
Cloud Cannabis opened its first location in Muskegon Township in June 2020, followed by locations in Ann Arbor, Traverse City and Utica. The company hopes to have 10 locations open by the end of this year, McLeod said. Cloud Cannabis employs more than 200 people, and also operates a processing facility in Warren.
“This partnership with Wonderbrett is unique in the fact that they’re bringing their entire genetics and grow operation here to cultivate, and are filling a hole in what we had in our cultivation arm,” McLeod said. “This helps us to be a more complete company and operator where we control our supply chain from seed to end product.”
Cloud Cannabis hopes to potentially double the growing capacity at the existing cultivation facility in Kalamazoo Township at 521 E. Mosel Ave. Rison BS LLC, an affiliate of KKind, purchased the property for $825,000 in 2018. Details of the recent sale were not yet available in Kalamazoo Township’s online property records.
“Cloud Cannabis Co. is the perfect partner for us in Michigan due to their expanding retail footprint, extraction and distribution across the state,” Wonderbrett Co-founder Brett Feldman said in a statement. “This partnership will bring our expertise for the development of craft, small-batch and artisanal products in California to a full-scale market in one of the nation’s fastest growing states for recreational cannabis.”
As mergers and acquisitions in the cannabis industry are on the rise across the state, smaller operators that are not vertically integrated will suffer because they will not be in control of their supply chain, McLeod said.
“As long as it’s done correctly and not oversaturated, it’s a market we can all be successful in,” McLeod said. “That’s what’s best for the industry, community, state, and all the people we employ.”
