Hikurangi Cannabis was one of the first in the country to get a license for medicinal cannabis cultivation last year.
Hikurangi Cannabis was one of the first in the country to get a license for medicinal cannabis cultivation last year.
Now, its managing director Manu Caddie said Ministry of Health officials had extended its license to allow for it to import stronger varieties.
He said they were the first in the country to get the green light to grow strains with high levels of THC, the main psychoactive compound found in cannabis.
Delta Medical Cannabis Co. in Newport became the final facility to begin work.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — All five of Arkansas medical marijuana cultivation facilities are now under construction.
Delta Medical Cannabis Co. in Newport became the final facility to begin work, breaking ground on Tuesday.
The other four facilities are Natural State Wellness Enterprises, also in Newport, Natural State Medicinals Cultivation between Redfield and White Hall, Osage Creek Cultivation near Berryville and the BOLD Team in Cotton Plant.
The company has completed an equity investment in Herbert, a brand platform that focuses on the adult-use cannabis beverage and edibles market.
TORONTO, Jan. 22, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRESS RELEASE -- Canopy Rivers Inc. has announced it has completed an equity investment in 10663522 Canada Inc., or “Herbert," a brand platform that focuses on the adult-use cannabis beverage and edibles market. Canopy Rivers subscribed for C$1,500,000 of preferred shares in Herbert, and received incremental warrants entitling the company to increase its economic interest in Herbert under certain circumstances, as well as other governance-related rights.
“Herbert represents an opportunity for Canopy Rivers to be invested at a very early stage in a company focused on the adult-use cannabis beverage and edible product segment,” said Narbe Alexandrian, president of Canopy Rivers. “In the U.S., cannabis-infused beverages have emerged as a high-growth segment within the ingestibles category, and include a variety of products in both THC- and CBD-dominant formats. In Canada, we expect similar growth beyond dried flower and oils, into food and beverage. Canopy Rivers believes that Herbert, equipped with existing R&D, marketing and manufacturing expertise, has the ability to enter this market quickly and achieve success in creating widely appealing THC-infused beverages and edibles under this new standalone brand.”
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Canopy Rivers, one of the most progressive players in the global cannabis sector,” said Lee Reitelman, co-founder and director of marketing at Herbert. “We believe cannabis offers a range of experiences to consumers, and we look forward to unlocking that potential for a wider audience. We see the beverage category as especially well-suited for the delivery of cannabis, in providing a convenient, consistent, fast-acting, low-sugar alternative to conventional edible products. As Herbert seeks out new frontiers in the THC-infused functional food and beverage landscape, we are looking forward to being able to leverage Canopy Rivers’ diverse platform of innovative cannabis ventures to achieve our goals.”
Herbert’s mission is to combine advanced technology with its knowledge and appreciation of the experience-enhancing properties of cannabis, creating products specifically designed around consumers’ many lifestyle needs. The company’s core beverage offering will focus primarily around THC-infused products designed for distribution within Canada. Established by certain principals of Greenhouse Juice Company, Herbert will, through a supply arrangement with Greenhouse, leverage Greenhouse’s existing purpose-built, food-grade and GMP-compliant production and processing facility, one of the most sophisticated of its kind in North America. On Jan. 14, 2019, Canopy Rivers announced a convertible debt financing in Greenhouse, a dynamic plant-based food and beverage company with a new focus on creating CBD-infused products.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has approved iAnthus to acquire all issued and outstanding common shares of MPX.
NEW YORK and TORONTO, Jan. 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRESS RELEASE -- iAnthus Capital Holdings, Inc. and MPX Bioceutical Corporation have announced that the Supreme Court of British Columbia has issued a final order approving the previously announced plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) pursuant to which iAnthus will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of MPX pursuant to the terms of an Arrangement Agreement between iAnthus and MPX dated Oct. 18, 2018.
The closing of the Arrangement remains subject to certain customary closing conditions set out in the Arrangement Agreement. Assuming the timely satisfaction or waiver of these closing conditions, the Arrangement is expected to close on or about Jan. 30, 2019.
Further information about the Arrangement is available on the SEDAR profiles of iAnthus and MPX on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
Upon closing of the Arrangement, MPX International Corporation, MPX’s spin-out company, will hold all of the non-U.S. businesses of MPX and will be focused on developing and operating assets across the global cannabis industry with an emphasis on cultivating, manufacturing and marketing products which include cannabinoids as their primary active ingredient. Initial key assets will include Canveda Inc. (a Canadian Licensed Producer), the Salus BioPharma Corporation agreement with Panaxia Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and 50 percent of a medical cannabis license application in Australia. MPX International has applied to list its securities on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
As U.S. cannabis markets have matured at a rapid clip since 2014, so too has the sophistication of the industry’s gatekeepers.
As U.S. cannabis markets have matured at a rapid clip since 2014, so too has the sophistication of the industry’s gatekeepers. Cannabis business license applications look different than they did at the outset of Colorado and Washington’s marketplaces. More investment dollars have flowed into the cannabis space, and the barriers to entry have grown more substantial (while in other cases those barriers are being chipped away by state legislators and vocal business owners).
Brian Vicente, partner and founding member of Vicente Sederberg LLC in Denver, Colo., was one of the primary authors of Colorado’s Amendment 64. For years, he’s been watching the industry closely.
With more state markets almost certain to come online within the next year or so in the U.S., we caught up with Vicente to get a sense of how those cannabis business applications—and the applicants themselves—are changing.
Brian Vicente: Different states and different municipalities approach licensing differently. And that certainly has evolved over the years. A lot of your early states—Colorado, Washington, Alaska—really had an open system that was more of a check-the-box system. [These] applications, you need to make sure that your zoning is correct, and you don't have certain felonies, and you have the check to pay the fees, and then you can you can get a license to operate. A lot of newer states, whether that’s New Jersey Florida, [Arkansas] or what have you, have adopted more of a merit-based application system. That [application] asked for a combination of: explain your property, explain your team and how you're going to be so great at servicing folks and explain your capital and how you're going to get this done. We’ve seen that evolve in certain ways where there will be a fourth or fifth criterion added in: tell us about the diversity of your team, tell us about the economic impacts you are going to have.
BV: When they're giving away a really small number of licenses, those licenses are inherently going to be very valuable to the people who win them. If I’m one of 10 people in Florida that can sell marijuana, that's a valuable license to hold. As such, you see some pretty deep-pocketed MSOs, those multistate operators that apply for those [licenses] and often win. They [have] an application writing team and they have access to tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and it makes it a little harder for your local guys or your economically disadvantaged groups to apply.
BV: I think there's a robust discussion. It’s such an exciting moment in time, where you have states and municipalities that are deciding how to regulate marijuana [and] medical marijuana for the first time ever. So, they’re looking at: how have other states, how have other cities done this? There certainly are things like lawsuits to be concerned about; a lot of these big state merit-based processes, there's inevitably flurry of lawsuits by the applicants who didn't win. So, municipalities and states are thinking about how to avoid that.
And then I think there's a real feeling, and I believe this is based in fact, that there's more and more essentially white, well-heeled males, typically, that are winning these licenses. Is that really appropriate in the world we live in, especially when a lot of people that worked to change marijuana laws like myself did so because we wanted to help people that were disproportionately impacted by the racist War on Drugs?
[As] they were giving out awards to people to get rich, it seems like some of those economically impacted groups and disproportionately impacted groups should have certainly equal access or perhaps some sort of preference. As such, we're seeing Maryland is about to award some licenses to minority ethnic groups. Florida is looking at doing something similar. Massachusetts, certain parts of California. These kinds of equity licensing programs are being discussed and formulated a bit.
BV: We’re seeing some of the largest acquisitions in marijuana history, right? And yes, those folks that are engaging in that acquisition did not go through the merit-based licensing process like their peers. There are a couple factors there. It’s certainly allowing folks with a large bankroll to enter markets and gobble up the licenses without necessarily having to prove their merit to the regulators, although they certainly do go through background checks and things of that nature.
The fun thing about being a lawyer in the space is that every state is different; residency rules and acquisition rules, it’s different in every state. So, it’s a bit difficult to navigate [this landscape for] these multistate operators, but often they can find a way to get it done. We certainly get a feel for what these licenses are selling for, and, yeah, a license is a lot less valuable in a place like Oklahoma, where [the state is] giving away thousands of licenses versus a New York.
But there’s so much enthusiasm from people that are really cannabis-curious that want to get in and invest in this space. And at this point they're often bidding against these multistate operators to see if they can get one of those licenses. Another factor … [is] certain states don't allow public companies to own marijuana licenses. Colorado is one. That's going to change this year, I predict. But some states do [allow public companies to own cannabis licenses].
Cannabis Business Times’ interactive legislative map is another tool to help cultivators quickly navigate state cannabis laws and find news relevant to their markets. View More
Eric Sandy