On seaside farmland on the Kekerengu coast, a sixth-generation family farm is producing some of the world’s most in-demand organic medicinal cannabis.
South Marlborough company Puro has become one of the world’s largest growers of medicinal cannabis for both local and international markets and, as demand grows at world-leading levels, the opportunity for Marlborough farmers to benefit from a booming industry success is coming closer.
COO Winston Macfarlane says Puro continues to scale up and invest in their processing capabilities in Kekerengu and their indoor development centre in Waihopai, with demand leading to what will likely be New Zealand’s first outsourced growing contracts, to be available for Marlborough farmers ahead of the 2027 harvest.
Puro produces cannabis flower, hash and rosin through its seven-stage live drying process which includes freeze drying in a Cuddon cannabis-specific freeze dryer.
For their 2026 harvest, Puro will plant 18 hectares – 70,000 plants of 25 different cultivars producing roughly 90 tonnes of material - all germinated and grown under both New Zealand’s strict medicinal cannabis audit requirements and BioGro organic registrations, ahead of a harvesting process using the whole plant.
However, Winston says their success hasn’t come without struggle and some good fortune.
He recalls a chance meeting between his brother Sank and Tom Forrest, now CEO and Chief Development Officer respectively, which caused instant interest from Tom.
“Tom asked, “is there any land around here where we might grow medicinal cannabis”, said Winston. “So Sank showed Tom this large, flat plateau, which is sort of quite unusual for the area, and Tom said on the spot, “one day we will grow medicinal cannabis here” - now we’ve grown five successful commercial rounds, so he must have been on to something.
“In the first year, we grew 60,000 CBD dominant plants under organic practices to prove to the world that we could have successful yield, whilst learning about the compliance and regulations around exporting the product.
“Because of the restrictions to get product to market we scaled it back - it was a really tough period with consolidation in the industry and a lot of other growers closing, but then we got that regulatory change piece happening, and we’ve established some great relationships.”
Puro established several contracts locally with Helius Therapeutics in Auckland, but since export restrictions have loosened, Puro has signed supply contracts for Australia, the UK and to Germany through a third party – including a record $16 million deal for organic medicinal cannabis with IPS Pharma.
“We get regularly audited from both Ministry of Health and certified GACP, as required by many of our customers, so we get audited by them with complete traceability right from seed through to the finished package product, so there’s a lot of data and record keeping throughout the whole season”, he says.
“BioGro was in from the offset, because it’s a medicine that people are putting in their bodies and natural medicine should be organic - organic can reduce your yield, but we haven’t been seeing that, and the demand for organic cannabis within the medicinal market is very strong.
"There’s only a handful of growers worldwide that are growing cannabis organically at this scale so we might not have necessarily been getting a price difference, but being organic certainly got our foot in the door.”
While the product might be unfamiliar, the harvest process will be familiar to many vineyard owners with a limited window for each cultivar to be harvested and stored for processing, while an home-grown process allows for the cannabis to be stored and processed or sent to clients when needed for processing into medicinal products.
Harvesters take the flower off using scissors, place it into food grade liners and take it to the processing plant where it’s weighed, recorded, flash cured then freeze dried using a Cuddon HiLyph HL50 vacuum controlled freeze dryer.
Staff then hand trim, quality control, and package the flower into one of the around 30 freezer containers which Winston predicts to be on site to store this year’s harvest.
The rest of the plant goes through solventless extraction in freezing water to create a high potency bubble hash, which is then also freeze dried or turned into rosin.
“From last year’s 16,000 to this year growing 75,000 plants, it’s still a five-week harvest so we are scaling the numbers to make sure that there’s no bottlenecks at receiving and freezing processing as the beauty of the freezing process enables us to secure the crop, hold it in stasis, and process it across a whole year”, says Winston.
“We grow inside for research and development, but it’s all using electricity for lighting, heating, environmental controls so cost just goes through the roof, instead of growing under the renowned natural UV sunlight and ocean air of Marlborough.
“We secure our genetics from preferred organic seed suppliers, but import is expensive so we’re also set up for genetic and seed production in our indoor facility growing for half of our in-house seed.
“Just like Sauvignon Blanc we believe our cannabis from this location have specific terpenes and flavonoids familiar to this location. The sooner we can become more self-sufficient for providing our own seed and developing cultivars that thrive in this environment, the better.”
With plans for seed self-sufficiency and increased processing capability already underway, plus processing freezer rooms being built and a larger Cuddon freeze dryer on order to meet demand, Puro is looking toward contract growers as demand for their product outstrips their current 18 hectares.
“New Zealand’s still quite slow at the uptake, but worldwide trending growth is so big that now we’re setting up a contract grant model where people get their piece of land licensed and we’re also getting so much interest from people wanting to grow, especially adding to farm diversification”, says Winston.
“It’ll open different types of genetics for different locations which bring on their own characteristics that are unique to that location. This year, we’ll be growing 90 tonne of product so it’s making sure we’ve got processes in place to be able to turn it into a finished product within the year, before the next harvest, while scaling up and finding efficiencies in growing technique, equipment, processing rooms, and automation.
“We currently have a HL50, holding 27 kilos of frozen product at 85 percent moisture content and pulling out, depending on flower density, roughly five kilos but we’ve placed an order for the next one up, an HL600 which has five times the shelf space but is a seven-figure investment ... while we’re also building environmental control processing rooms. If it’s too warm flowers can get sticky if you’re handling them in anything above sort of 10, 12 degrees.
“Last year we had 45 odd part-time staff for harvest, and this year it’ll be 150, alongside bringing new permanent staff on for the larger processing. There are significant costs in scaling but the risk on the other side is not being able to deliver product to our customers in a timely fashion.”
For Winston, the relationship between traditional farming and medicinal cannabis growing is one made in heaven, but he says there’s always room for improvement.
“We’ve got massive confidence being involved in the industry and we’re so restricted by what we can promote, which is difficult because there has been a stigma even around the medicinal cannabis industry.
“Cannabis likes it dry and hot to get a bigger yield, higher concentrations and better potency so I’m expecting we will have better than last season’s yield and concentrations this year, as it’s been quite wet summers mostly since we started.
“The part that we don’t like about our operation is the single use plastic wrap on our lifted rows - unfortunately FuturePost wouldn’t take it because of the soil and dust contaminants on the plastic, and we’ve explored wool matting, but it doesn’t stand up to the winds we get.
“But as people learn about the benefits that it offers as an alternative to opioids and as the education piece happens and people learn, it’s only going to grow.”
