Looks like a slow start to the week in weed with no major company updates coming out early Monday morning. Over the weekend, however, we saw two companies announce new cultivation licenses, another company lose some analyst coverage and a major European country announcing plans to experiment with a medical cannabis regime that could serve as many as one million patients.
– Jameson Berkow
Table of contents More cannabis to be grown outdoors • Eight Capital drops Wayland Group coverage • Zenabis receives industrial hemp license • France prepares for medical cannabis
More cannabis to be grown outdoors
With precious little time left in the spring planting season, WeedMD became the fourth medical cannabis producer in Canada to win an outdoor cultivation license on Friday. The company intends to plant 20,000 clones on a 10-acre plot outside of its Strathroy greenhouse in southwestern Ontario.
As Cannabis Pro’s Marcy Nicholson has reported extensively, many companies are motivated by the potential savings as outdoor-grown cannabis is believed to cost as little as one fifth as much as growing indoors. WeedMD joins Good Buds of Vancouver Island and fellow Ontario-based producers Agripharm and 48North in obtaining government approval for outdoor cultivation, though many more are still waiting in line. As of two weeks ago, roughly 200 applications for outdoor grows were still in the queue at Health Canada.
Eight Capital drops Wayland Group coverage
Investors now have only Derek Dley of Canaccord Genuity to provide financial analysis of Wayland Group (formerly Maricann) after Eight Capital dropped its coverage Friday due to a “reallocation of analyst resources.” The loss of one of only two analysts that previously covered the company comes after the company was forced to release a clarifying statement on its transaction with ICC International Cannabis Corp. after ICC made an “erroneous” claim that the deal -- which would see ICC take a 49-per-cent stake in Wayland’s international assets in exchange for 300 million shares and a three-year, 10,000kg-per-year supply agreement -- had already closed. In fact, Wayland said the two companies “continue to work towards closing” the agreement, but the company’s shares had already been bid up more than 6 per cent by the time the clarifying statement was released.
Zenabis receives industrial hemp license
British Columbia-based licensed cannabis producer Zenabis announced late Friday that Health Canada will allow the company to begin producing industrial hemp at its Langley facility. Rather than devote new cultivation space to hemp production, Zenabis intends to use its remaining unused land and its greenhouses to grow hemp during off-cycle periods for other plants. In a statement, the company stressed hemp cultivation at its Langley facility “will not interfere with planned cannabis cultivation activities” at the site. In addition to growing hemp to produce CBD extracts, Zenabis CEO Andrew Grieve said it will also allow the company to test a new vertical farming system.
France prepares for medical cannabis
Less than a week after the French Senate gave nearly unanimous approval of medical cannabis legislation, one of the country’s foremost experts on the drug is providing early details on how the first stage of legalization will look. Nicolas Authier, a pharmacology professor and head of the French government’s expert committee on medical cannabis, told local media on Sunday up to two years of “experimentation” could begin as soon as the national Health Ministry signs off. This could present an opportunity for Canadian producers, as France currently has no system in place to license and produce cannabis domestically. Mr. Authier said the country would “probably need to import [medical cannabis] until a French supply chain is set up" during the experimentation period, which he estimates could last until mid-2021. According to French patient groups, between 300,000 and one million people in France could qualify for medical cannabis based on the legislation passed last month.