Claresholm is no stranger to farming and specialty agriculture, which is one of the reasons they're about to capitalize on a new industry.

Custom Cannabis, a company that aims to grow cannabis for the world, is set to open a massive operation in the small Alberta town, bringing 35-40 full-time jobs with them.

Phase one operations is seeing more than 45,000 square feet of infrastructure go up, with more planned in the near future.

CEO and co-founder, Jeff Nielsen, says "we'll start growing these plants right from seed, move them through the vegetative and into the flowering process,and harvest them all on-site, before finally processing them into their finished product.".

Custom Cannabis looked at many different places to set up and and met with Claresholm officials, as well as officials from the MD of Willow Creek, before deciding on Claresholm.

Nielsen says, "they have been very welcoming and I think part of the reason is because they see this as specialty agriculture, and people in Southern Alberta do specialty agriculture, or agriculture in general, as good as anybody in the world."

Custom Cannabis expects to be fully operational by the new year.

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