First Of Its Kind: GrowGen & H360 Support NJ's New Cannabis Growers With Financing, Training & Biz Advice

Cannabis-focused chain of specialty hydroponic and organic garden centers GrowGeneration Corp. GRWG announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Harvest 360 Technologies, LLC, to launch a national program to support education and training for social equity applications.

"Today we announce NEXTGEN, the first initiative in our goal of supporting social equity and the inclusion of diverse applicants, including minority, women, and veteran entrepreneurs, to identify and empower small cultivators in New Jersey," Michael Salaman, president and co-founder of GrowGen said. "We expect over 500 teams to enter this competition, and GrowGeneration will be fully supporting 25 teams. That's over 100 people provided with a full scholarship with H360."

First Of Its Kind Program

This national education and training program is the first commitment of its kind in the cannabis space.

The NEXTGEN Micro Cultivation competition will begin with a GrowGen commitment of up to $500,000 to provide full scholarships for 25 cultivation teams that will establish micro grow licenses in the New Jersey adult-use cannabis market.

The Denver-based company agreed to provide scholarships to the program, access to equipment packages and market resources to applicants.

All entries in the contest will have access to an online cultivation portal with valuable resources to assist in preparing an application or being educated and informed about best practices in the New Jersey program.

The 25 finalist teams that make it to the second round will also receive complete planning and engineering services for their facilities from GrowGeneration and access to a compliant business services package from H360 worth thousands of dollars.

In the end, five winning teams will be then selected by a panel of judges to receive a comprehensive package including financing, advanced training, business service packages and direct operational support.

"Veteran, minorities, women, and residents of Impact Zones or Disproportionately Impacted Areas, are being encouraged to participate in new markets like New Jersey, New York, and Illinois, but they are not always given access to the tools necessary to compete and be successful," Todd Scattini, Global CEO of Harvest 360 said.

More recent news from GrowGen:

• GrowGeneration Expands In New York Via $9.4M Acquisition Of Mobile Media And MMI Agriculture
• GrowGeneration Stock Dives On Revised FY21 Revenue Outlook Of $420-$422M
• Cannabis Movers & Shakers: Turning Point Brands, Zentrela, GrowGen, Marijuana Policy Project

GRWG Price Action

GrowGen's shares traded 1.23% lower at $9.26 per share at the time of writing on Tuesday morning.

Photo: Courtesy of Kindel Media from Pexels