LAURIE WEIR
SMITHS FALLS — Visitors to Smiths Falls will have a rare opportunity during Old Home Week to step inside one of the town’s largest industrial employers.
Canopy Growth, which operates its cannabis processing and packaging facility on Hershey Drive, is offering guided public tours for the first time in years. The move is part of a renewed effort to reintroduce the company’s local operations to the community and promote transparency around its evolving production model.
The facility no longer cultivates cannabis on-site. Raw flower is now shipped in from growing operations across Canada, then processed in Smiths Falls. The site manufactures pre-rolled joints, flower, soft gels, oils, vapes and hash.
The industrial property has seen several transformations in recent years:
- Hershey closed its Smiths Falls operation in 2007
- Aquablue’s bottled water venture failed to launch in 2009
- Shorewood Packaging was demolished in 2013
- Tweed (Canopy Growth) opened later that same year
- The Tweed Visitor Centre debuted in 2018
- A cannabis beverage production venture began in 2019 and ended in 2023
- The original facility at 1 Hershey Drive was shuttered in 2023
- Production was consolidated and moved across the road to a purpose-built plant that anchors Canopy’s current operations
The Tweed name remains on the building as a nod to its local identity.
Earlier this month, Canopy’s Senior Director of Manufacturing and Operations Services, Djin Schott, led a media preview of the upcoming public tours. The walkthrough included packaging lines, shipping bays and production zones. Guests during Old Home Week can expect a similar experience, with access to designated areas of the plant.
Protective gear is mandatory: visitors must wear white lab coats, hair nets and rubberized boot covers with toe caps. The preview tour included a lighthearted shuffle through the facility in oversized red, steel-toed boot covers. It was a moment of comic relief inside a plant defined by strict protocols, spotless floors and a sanitized, clinical atmosphere. Still, the scent of cannabis was unmistakable throughout the space.
Tours run approximately 45 minutes and are accessible to individuals with mobility concerns.
Roughly 320 people work at the facility, many of them from Smiths Falls and nearby towns. While Canopy Growth is structured as a large national company, Schott noted that employees continue to shape workplace practices. It was staff input, he said, that helped retain the Tweed brand identity through earlier corporate transitions.
