CHANNEL Islands medical cannabis cultivator Northern Leaf has raised £14m in a five-times over-subscribed, pre-IPO fund-raising round.
Northern Leaf will use the money to progress the the development of its 75,000 sq ft Jersey growing facility – equivalent to the size of a football pitch – and associated extraction and production facilities.
Northern Leaf advisor Tristan Gervais, Chrystal Capital’s Head of Cannabis, said it had secured support from five global institutional investors.
The capital raise comes just months after Jersey-based Northern Leaf became the only second firm to receive a commercial licence to grow medical cannabis in the British Isles.
First Crop Planted
Northern Leaf anticipates listing on the London Stock Exchange later this year and in doing so will join a growing number of cannabis companies.
Speaking to BusinessCann recently Mr Gervais said it was ‘seeing strong client demand to invest in quality, private medical cannabis companies, such as Northern Leaf’.
Northern leaf’s cannabis plants will be processed and cannabinoids extracted at the Jersey facility which will also produce pharmaceutical-grade flowers and oils for the wholesale market, or to be processed into Northern’s own brands. It is also exploring ways to enter the UK market through the ‘specials’ medicine’ route.
Northern Leaf’s Jersey facilities are set to achieve achieve both EU GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) and GACP (Good Agricultural and Collection Practice) qualifications.
It aims to partner with UK and European cannabis distributors and processors in order to supply high-grade products for scientific and medicinal purposes across the Continent.
Northern Leaf became only the second company to secure a commercial high-THC medical cannabis licence in over 20 years after GW Pharmaceuticals in 1998.
Planting is due to get underway of the first crop of THC cannabis plants at Northern Leaf’s Jersey facility later this year.
