The Newark Planning Commission will hear this week from a business trying to obtain a special use permit for a marijuana manufacturing facility.
Loud Labs is applying for the permit to use the currently vacant industrial building on 303 Markus Court.
The facility will be used to produce regulated cannabis products including gummies and other edible products, vape cartridges and disposable units, concentrates and extracts and pre-rolled cannabis products.
The business has already been granted a manufacturing license from the state, and its plan is to source from cultivation facilities around the state.
Loud Labs CEO Jake Berry tells Newark City Council there will be no worries about any scent from the products into the community from his facility.
"These facilities don't really create any odor at all. Inside of the facility you could smell something, but outside you cannot at all. The only facilities that you're going to really run into that is going to be cultivation facilities, grow facilities. You do smell those,” said Berry. “Our facility, you will not. We do install different things like carbon filters in some of the areas where there could be greater smells associated with it."
Berry notes the company is minority owned, and if approved, it would provide Newark with 15 new jobs.
He adds a Newark resident – currently employed at Loud Labs’ New Jersey facility – would operate the new facility. The company currently has facilities in Colorado, Michigan and New Jersey.
The facility won’t be used to grow or sell products.
"So we source from various grow facilities around the state that are licensed, and typically, they would deliver that material to us. And then we would deliver the finished product," said Berry.
Newark’s Planning Commission meets Tuesday at 7 pm in council chambers.
