Green Dragon, a multi-state cannabis operator with retail and production facilities in Colorado and Florida, said it will shut down its 92,000-square-foot cultivation facility near Denver.
According to BusinessDen, 45 employees will be let go when the facility shuts down at the end of the month. Cory Azzalino, CEO of Green Dragon parent company Eaze, told the publication that lower cannabis prices in Colorado have contributed to making the facility unsustainable.
“It’s not economical despite our team’s best effort to improve yields…You’d either have to double yield or have the market price double for it to make sense,” he said, adding that imminent union contract negotiations were also likely to raise operational costs.
Green Dragon will keep all of its Colorado dispensaries open, but now they’ll sell products made with cannabis grown by someone else.
The closure comes as Eaze has been navigating financial issues. In October 2024, Azzalino said his team made the “difficult decision” to shutter Eaze after the company’s assets were sold at auction in August. Later that month, Eaze also announced plans to shut down its Green Dragon operations in Colorado.
But by November, Eaze had received $10 million in funding that allowed it to reopen operations under new ownership. The company said the funding would, among other things, let it expand Florida production capacity from 32,000 square feet to 64,000 square feet of flowering canopy, and open new dispensaries and expand delivery capacity across Florida, California, Colorado and Michigan.
