'Devastated' Guernsey growers 'owed more than £500,000' by cannabis company

• Roisin Gauson spoke to a group of growers who claim they have been left out of pocket.

A group of Guernsey growers say they are "devastated" after losing 18 tonnes of cannabis crops, claimed to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The crops were cut, harvested and taken away to be processed by The House of Green more than a year ago, but a number of growers say they are yet to be paid a penny for them.

The company, which has Guernsey politician Marc Leadbeater as a director, was one of the first to take advantage of the island's new cannabis licenses when they were introduced in 2021.

The House of Green set up a processing lab for CBD products on the island, but earlier this year, CEO Paul Smith claimed regulatory issues were stalling progress.

“Unfortunately the industry took a bit of a setback and we’re now at the point where other jurisdictions are moving ahead much more rapidly than Guernsey and that can be seen across the water in Jersey, but also further afield across Europe," he said.

The harvested crops have spent the last year in storage, but are now being incinerated as the company already has around 10 years' worth of supplies to produce CBD products on-island.

The House of Green has "mothballed" its laboratory, and is concentrating on selling CBD products rather than manufacturing and exporting its own.

One of the growers who wishes to remain anonymous, 'Andy', told ITV News of the impact on him.

He said: "It’s been devastating. I haven’t been able to sleep. I worked for 18 months for nothing, used all my savings, and was working 12-14 hours a day just to get to the point when we could get planting.

"Then the work began again with the growing and it went really well. We had a bumper harvest - we were so proud of it - and then just to be told we’re not getting a penny for it... It was devastating."

ITV News has spoken to a number of growers, who claim they are owed more than half a million pounds between them - but they only received a signed 'letter of intent' from the company, and admit formal contracts to purchase the crops were never exchanged.

A year after The House of Green took possession of the cannabis crops, the company said they are no longer needed and if the original growers didn't want them back, they would have to cover the cost of incinerating them.

'Jack' said: "They said it would cost £7,000 - that’s just for our crop alone if we didn’t sign an agreement which said we couldn’t speak to the media and we couldn’t sue them down the line."

These growers did not sign - saying they want the money they feel they are owed.

'Andy' said: “We’re the ones that invested, we’re the ones that put in the labour and we’re the ones that are getting nothing out of it. They’re walking away - just washing their hands of the whole thing."

Another grower, Sean, said the growers invested heavily in their growing business, ensuring their greenhouses were fully modernized and met the stringent security requirements.

As well as serving as a politician in Guernsey's parliament, Marc Leadbeater is one of The House of Green's company directors.

He resigned from the island's Home Affairs committee last year after being sidelined from drawing up Guernsey's cannabis laws over fears of a conflict of interest.

The politician says while he isn't involved in the day-to-day running of the company, he explained why the cannabis crops are being incinerated, rather than returned to the growers:

"Any material that is not due to be used will have to be destroyed by whatever means the BGCA [Bailiwick of Guernsey Cannabis Agency] tells every licence holder to do.

"If you're going to hold products which are classed as controlled substances, you have to keep on having a licence to store that - and that comes at a hell of a cost.

"So if there's no chance of moving the material off-island to market it, it doesn't make financial sense to pay to store that material. It makes more sense to destroy that material."

• Watch ITV News' full interview with The House of Green director, Deputy Marc Leadbeater...

He said the plan was to return the crops back to the growers rather than disposing of them, but even with an eight-foot fence surrounding them, the growers' sites didn't meet the UK Home Office's security standards for storing cannabis:

"[The cannabis crops] were taken to our drying facility and then up here on the instruction of Law Enforcement.

"It was due to be returned to the growers, but since the signing of the MoU, they no longer regarded the original sites to be secure. They regard this site as secure, so they wanted to keep all the material here - in the most secure facility on the island."

Deputy Leadbeater also addressed the allegations made by the group of growers.

He says they were never told they "wouldn't get a penny" for the crops: "They were all made an offer and the majority of the growers accepted the offer.

"Bearing in mind, that that product can't be taken to market. It can be processed here but you can't move the oil off the island. You can't move the biomass or the oil, so it cannot be taken to market.

"We've produced enough CBD oil in this lab to last Guernsey for the next 10 years, it's pointless us producing any more and we can't sell it."

Deputy Leadbeater blamed Guernsey's government for issuing licences to grow the crops but making it difficult to export the products to be sold overseas.

He said The House of Green could resume production in future "as the island's legislation evolves."

ITV News asked Guernsey's government for clarification on the licensing issues and was told that although there is a rigorous process to go through under the Memorandum of Understanding with the UK Home Office, it’s not impossible as two other license holders have already been approved to export from Guernsey.

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