Northern Leaf, the Jersey-based medical cannabis cultivator, looked all but certain to follow in the footsteps of Curaleaf, Aurora and Tilray to become the British Isles’ very own international cannabis superstar.
In 2021, the height of the global ‘green rush’, Northern Leaf was granted the first British high-THC commercial cultivation licence since GW Pharmaceuticals (now Jazz Pharmaceuticals) in 1998.
By this point, it had already secured 100,000sq ft of glasshouse space and had already spent £12.5m purchasing and refitting the real estate, with plans to invest a further £6m.
Despite having a friendly regulator in Jersey’s government, all the money it could spend, and the second Home Office licence in British history, by early 2024 it was teetering on the brink of liquidation, struggling to raise working capital funding, and at the tail end of a second failed merger in as many months.
It is, sadly, far too common a tale in the cannabis sector, and one that usually ends there. But Northern Leaf’s next chapter was different. Two experienced cannabis entrepreneurs bet that the underlying facility could succeed with the right team and network and set out to turn its largely unused capacity into a commercially viable operation.
The results so far suggest they were right…
Under a new management team led by growers with more than 50 years of combined industry experience, use of the facility has increased from around one-quarter to three-quarters of its capacity.
Northern Leaf now employs more than 50 people across cultivation, production, engineering, quality and management, making it the largest employer in Jersey’s medical cannabis sector.
The company produced approximately 6.75 tonnes of medical cannabis in 2025 and exported almost 3.6 tonnes of that dried flower to Germany, its most important market. That same year, revenue reached £8m – five times the previous year’s figure – and the company recorded its first EBITDA-positive year.
Those figures are the outcome of changes made across almost every part of the business: its finances, genetics, cultivation, post-harvest processing and route to market.
But the entrepreneurs behind the turnaround trace those gains back to a bet they made in spring 2024 – that Northern Leaf’s problem was not the facility itself, but the way it was being used.
The bet
Ed Wilkinson, now Northern Leaf’s chairman, started out as a cannabis grower, not a financier. In California, he founded and built Half Moon Grow, the first operation permitted to cultivate cannabis commercially in San Mateo County when it opened its 120,000 sq ft mixed light cultivation facility in 2019.
Wilkinson had previously run a farm in Humboldt County, obtaining only the second licence issued by the authority in 2016 amongst over 2,000 applicants. He steered the business through California’s brutal 2021 price crash, when a pound that had fetched up to $2,000 fell to $600 or less, and weaker businesses collapses.
So, when news that the Northern Leaf facility was coming up for sale, he recognised the ‘Ferrari’ hiding under the pile of red tape. A finished, EU-GMP-accredited facility he suggested was on offer for ‘less than 10 cents on the dollar’, was an opportunity he could not ignore.
After scraping the money together to put in a £2.5m offer in May 2024 and enduring sleepless nights about what he was getting himself into, he officially took control of the company in July that year.
The company’s own filings note that two experienced cannabis operators ‘took a leap of faith and transferred the necessary funds in time to prevent the company’s collapse.’
Wilkinson already knew Steven Tan, who was independently circling the company, and recognised in him the chief executive the business needed to get back on track. Tan took the reins as CEO just weeks later in September.
The pair believed Northern Leaf’s problem was not the facility itself but the gap between its substantial investment and its ability to cultivate and sell cannabis consistently at scale. With experienced operators now holding the keys to the ‘Ferrari’, that theory was about to be tested.
Northern Leaf’s Jersey facility produced 6.5 tonnes in 2025.
A facility without a business
Only after looking under the bonnet, following the acceptance of his rescue bid, did Wilkinson fully understand what he had just bought.
In a letter to shareholders in April 2025, the company said it had inherited approximately £9m in secured debt tied to the site and equipment, alongside £3.5m owed to legacy creditors.
Northern Leaf’s original strategy centred on securing a London listing. It announced plans to go public in 2021 and raised further investment over the following years, but the IPO did not materialise.
By early 2024, the company had raised or borrowed more than £30m and secured EU-GMP accreditation, yet had only generated around £400,000 in revenue and left much of its operating capacity unused.
A proposed reverse takeover with Scottish CBD business Voyager Life was intended to provide a rescue route but collapsed in April 2024 after the associated fundraising fell short. The company remained at risk of liquidation and urgently needed working capital.
Wilkinson and his business colleague, Wray Herbert-King, along with some of the existing Northern Leaf shareholders, responded with a £2.5m convertible loan note, which was unsecured and interest-free over three years.
This investment secured the facility’s immediate future, but turning it into a sustainable business would require a different approach to its finances, cultivation and route to market.
Rebuilt by growers
By the time Tan and Wilkinson were officially at the helm, the work to revive Northern Leaf was already under way.
On the financial side, they worked with lenders and legacy creditors to restructure the company’s obligations and establish what the board described as a ‘sustainable financial path forward’.
Lenders, and, in the company’s words, ‘the majority of our creditors’, were willing to work with the new owners allowing the board to construct a ‘sustainable financial path forward’ and move from ‘survival mode to a proper turnaround’.
The operational changes ran deeper, beginning with the strains it devoted its considerable growing space to. Tan, the incoming chief executive, is as much a breeder as a manager. Northern Leaf’s head of cultivation, Asaf Shaked, credits him with bringing in much of the company’s genetics library.
The nursery now runs a continuous ‘phenohunt’ – hundreds of seedlings are grown and assessed, with more than 90% rejected so the team can identify the two or three strongest plants to use as commercial mothers for future crops.
New strains, Shaked explained to Business of Cannabis, are chosen for their yield, smell, density and how cleanly they run through processing, alongside cannabinoid content.
“If it’s not selling, it’s not selling,” Shaked says. “So we are driven by market demand.”
Downstream, the team reorganised the processing line to increase throughput while also putting previously unused capacity to work.
Head of production and facilities Andrew Dunlop, who helped design the facility and has worked there since it was built, said production increased almost immediately after the takeover.
“Pretty much straight away after Ed bought the business, we went from one compartment to two compartments, basically overnight,” he said.
The team also moved to fewer, larger batches, reducing the cleaning and reset time between production runs while retaining the same documented quality controls.
Processing that ‘used to do about 100 kgs in 32 days,’ Dunlop says, now moves ‘about 250 kgs in about eight days.’
With a cutting-edge facility at their disposal, the team shifted their priorities to output, yield, cost and quality, and the numbers have followed.
Together, the additional cultivation space, genetics selected for commercial performance and larger production runs allowed Northern Leaf to increase output significantly. The ‘Ferrari’ was beginning to perform as its new owners believed it could.
Bringing more of the value chain in-house
Northern Leaf holds MHRA GMP Part II certification and supplies dried medical cannabis flower in bulk as an active pharmaceutical ingredient. Its international partners complete the later stages of manufacturing, packaging and branding before the medicine reaches patients.
The company now wants to bring more of that process on-island and capture what Tan described as greater “downstream value” for the benefit of the entire Jersey cannabis cluster, retaining value in the island and ensuring better quality and control.
The company has already taken a step in that direction through its on-site cryopasteurisation facility.
The non-irradiation process reduces naturally occurring bacteria and mould while preserving delicate terpene profiles. Bringing it in-house gives Northern Leaf greater control over each batch and reduces its reliance on external providers.
“Keeping this capability on-site means it is integrated into our own controlled process instead of being outsourced to a third party,” Tan said.
“We decide whether treatment is necessary using batch-specific testing and quality data, while maintaining full traceability throughout the process.”
An opportunity for Jersey
Tan and Wilkinson argue that Jersey’s track record of regulating complex industries and proximity to mainland Europe give Northern Leaf a shorter and more predictable route to market than producers in many competing jurisdictions. They believe those advantages could create a wider opportunity for the Island as demand for medical cannabis grows.
“Jersey has an opportunity, with its nimble government, strategic location and favourable tax base, to become a major player in the global cannabis industry as the sector continues to develop,” Wilkinson said.
But Tan cautioned that realising that opportunity would require continued collaboration between the industry, government and energy providers.
Energy accounts for more than 30% of Northern Leaf’s production costs, he said, making the cost of power increasingly important as global production shifts towards lower-cost jurisdictions.
“It is key that the energy companies understand they are part of the economics of localised cannabis production,” Tan said. “It is clear from global market forces that production will be driven into low-cost energy regions. The solution is more collaboration, which would benefit all stakeholders, including the general public.”
Tan said Jersey’s regulatory framework would need to “continue to evolve” as the market develops, maintaining “robust and secure” controls while creating a favourable environment in which the industry can compete globally – pointing to the Island’s rapid export permitting process as an example of where Jersey has already demonstrated an advantage.
The next bet
So far, Wilkinson’s wager that the facility could succeed under experienced operators has been vindicated. Northern Leaf has put previously unused infrastructure to work, increased production and built a route to market.
Its next challenge – shared by Jersey’s other cannabis producers – is to capture more of the value created after cultivation by treating, processing and ultimately packaging finished medicines in the Island.
It comes as the company also explores opportunities in import, processing and distribution as price compression and rising energy costs reshape cannabis production in Europe.
A blueprint for distressed assets?
As consolidation continues across North America and Europe, larger operators are acquiring distressed cannabis businesses and absorbing their assets. Northern Leaf’s story points to another possible outcome.
The millions invested in cultivation facilities around the world need not be written off when their original business models fail. With the right operating expertise, quality systems and access to customers, those assets can still become commercially productive.
Wilkinson’s first bet was that Northern Leaf’s ‘Ferrari’ could be made to perform. The next is that the company can keep more of the value it creates.
