The first medical cannabis company to IPO on the London Stock Exchange, Kanabo Group, has signed a letter of intent to acquire a leading processor and distributor of medical cannabis in Europe, Materia.
The Kanabo acquisition of Materia, which operates a state-of-the-art EU GMP certified facility and has subsidiaries in Malta, Germany and the UK, will see the import and selling of medical cannabis products to German pharmacies through Materia Deutschland and a focus on bringing new products to patients.
Speaking to Cannabis Wealth, Kanabo and Materia say the acquisition will utilise Materia’s innovation in the supply chain to bring products into European markets.
Synergies
Kanabo says it believes that Materia’s complementary infrastructure will be crucial to expanding and strengthening its existing supply value chain of medical cannabis and CBD products. Materia Deutschland has agreements in place with numerous suppliers and already distributes its medical cannabis portfolio to pharmacy customers.
Kanabo CEO, Avihu Tamir, said: “When we met Materia for the first time there was immediately a few points that pop; that it is the entering the most interesting market in Europe right now, Germany, and have not just a licence, but a sales team in Germany, that is already selling products and having a relationship with physicians and pharmacies.
“The second thing, which I think is one of the biggest assets that Materia has, is having an EU GMP facility in Malta, so it is inside the EU. Above all, I would say is management, which has a clear plan.
“On the one hand is product development and commercialisation, where the assets that we are bringing into the R&D centre in Israel gives us the capability to bring them to the market and to commercialise them under the Kanabo brand, and Materia is bringing the processing and production capabilities, their relationship with suppliers around the world and access into the most interesting market the CBD markets in the UK and the medical cannabis market in Germany. So, there is minimum overlap and maximum synergy.
Materia’s managing director for Europe, Nick Pateras, commented: “Most of us who are on the Materia side, like our founding management team, come from the Canadian cannabis industry. I spent five years in cannabis, and Deepak, who is our co-founder and CEO, spent eight years in cannabis, and we both come from a pharma background prior to that. So, we can bring that experience to cannabis. What we have seen in the Canadian space was a lot of emphasis on effectively trying to do everything across the value chain. When we were starting to think about how to architect the Materia business, we thought cultivation is a very expertise-driven capability, so, how do we build a company that really zones in on the value-adding activities. We perceived them and we saw in other markets that they stay at processing and distribution.
“By leveraging the cultivation expertise of a global supplier network without doing cultivation ourselves, we landed very quickly at doing an EU GMP processing capability, building our facility. In a place like Malta, it is very interesting because it allows us to work with suppliers all over the world who may not have had their EU GMP certificates yet, and we represent the doorway for them, wherever they are based, into the European market. We can tap into low-cost, high-quality supply, as well products that have genetics and have the stability that no one else has seen in Europe, yet. The next step is extracts and producing what we know the market will move towards now.”
New products to market
Kanabo is to commercialise its research through Materia Malta’s facility, including formulas developed for its VapePod device, and those targeted to treat medical conditions such as insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), neuropathic pain and anxiety. Tamir highlights the focus of the market currently remains with flower, but in the next few years it will move to more innovative products.
“What was amazing about this particular marriage is on one side of the aisle, Avihu and his team have developed medical grade extracts targeted to specific medical conditions with medical and clinical trial data behind it, so that we can actually produce in Malta, and we don’t have to go through the R&D process ourselves,” said Pateras.
“So, the coming together of these two companies I think is just a really nice complementary infrastructure which is really exciting.”
Tamir added: “A big part is our flagship product idea is the number one problem in the industry and that is the delivery method. It is huge problem. There are only two delivery methods in the market that have significant market share and that is smoking and tinctures.
“Sadly smoking is the number one delivery method right now. So, we are solving this issue by having a product that is easy for patients to jump from smoking into something else that mimics the same benefits of inhalation, but at the same time gives the comfort for physicians to be able to prescribe a product that has a specific dose, and which has medical validation behind it. Pain management is obviously the biggest challenge that the market has. In the last five years, physicians have been starting to feel uncomfortable prescribing opiates. This is the focus of the first product we’re launching now in the UK.
“The second product is for mental health. We see a lot of success with cannabis, and, there are medicines that are problematic. If you are looking in the market right now, all of the products are almost the same oils with different brands, but exactly the same flowers. The options that you have now in Germany are probably the same amount of options you will find in one dispensary in California, so, that is very limiting for patients. Materia is going to bring products into the market, dealing with the supply chain challenge.
“The last challenge is patient access challenge, and that is something that both companies are going to work together on. We will be investing more in patient access, to have safe access for patients and for them to be able to get a prescription, especially in the UK.”
Co-founder and CEO of Materia, Deepak Anand, added: “Kanabo have already been researching products to put onto the market on the vape side. I think the combination that we provide is that we have been doing the same thing but on the medical cannabis side, where we have been thinking ahead to novel product formulations, keeping in mind that flower and oils are currently where the European markets are. Looking at the rearview mirror, as we have seen in Canada, that moved on very quickly. Canada was predominantly a flower market for a very long time and that has shifted quickly into other kinds of products form. So, R&D and growth are pivotal to both our companies.”
Europe’s largest public cannabis company
The acquisition will create Europe’s largest public cannabis company, a move which Tamir says is a step towards both company’s visions of being leaders in the industry.
“We want to be recognised as the authority to physicians, because there is a trust deficit by virtue of cannabis just being new. There needs to be a body of evidence put in front of physicians and for that, we need to be working with patients,” says Tamir.
“The company’s ambition is to be coming forward with products that provide new ways of speaking to patients and physicians, and that are accessible, relatable and trustworthy, and really demonstrate to people that cannabis is a new medicine. We are adhering to the strictest pharmaceutical standards, and it should actually be considered, just like any other medicine.
“We are talking about patients all over the US, all over Europe and all over the world, who have had to suffer through a quality of life, because they have not had access to cannabis – let’s change that. Let’s allow people to understand that cannabis is a new product. We want to be the flag bearers of that story.”
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