Whilst expressing empathy with patients impacted by the recent German crackdown on cannabis flower, the head of the country’s leading wholesaler is bullish about its prospects – with orders up 50% since its purchase by Canadian cannabis giant High Tide.
Stefan Adomeit is co-founder and managing director of Remexian Pharma GmbH. Based near Berlin, it supplies around 100,000 of the country’s 800,000 medical cannabis flower patients.
At the start of this month, reimbursements of cannabis flowers, through the state health-insurance programme, were halted as part of a government cost-cutting drive and a preference for finished pharmaceutical products.
Adomeit said: “For our business, we are selling low-price flower, affordable flower, so our main focus are the self-paying patients, not reimbursed patients. We don’t see a huge effect on our business.”
Some 65,000 reimbursed patients were immediately impacted by this decision, and these were mainly patients who’d had to suffer to get their preferred medicine.
Adomeit continued: “These patients had to prove that nothing else worked. So all standard therapies which are available in the market, you had to try, and during that time, you couldn’t treat yourself with cannabis from the black market or self-paid cannabis, because otherwise your symptoms would have been better.
“So you had to actually suffer (and have that) documented by the doctor to prove you actually need the cannabis.
“(Now as a result) there’s a lot of confusion, and patients are asking themselves, ‘Can I actually afford to treat myself with that product or not?’
“Because they lost their reimbursement for flowers, and that’s a sad situation. The number of patients is not very high, but for them, that’s a dramatic situation. Okay. So is there a solution? Is there an easy solution to this? Actually, unfortunately, no.
“They have to choose; can I afford to buy the flower by myself, or maybe they are forced to go back to the black market, which nobody wants? Or they look for alternative pharmaceuticals, but I don’t see an alternative for flowers yet. For some extracts or new products might work, but not for all.”
Near-50% year-on-year increase
During High Tide’s second fiscal quarter of 2026, up to the end of April this year, Remexian distributed 7.6 tonnes of medical cannabis into the German market, an increase of 49% on the previous year. This produced revenues of $31.6m compared to $25m during the first quarter of 2026.
Looking ahead, Adomeit remains cautious, saying: “We are in a very price-intense market right now (with) a lot of imports, so selling prices have gone down a lot. But, so far, we are doing fine.”
Remexian imports from 22 countries, with Canada being the primary supplier, followed by Portugal and South Africa.
It competes with 80 companies in its domestic market in which pharmacy medical cannabis is priced at around €5, which is substantially lower than black market flower ranging from €8 to €10.
The two indications for which its products are mainly used are pain and sleep.
With France and Spain focusing on pharmaceutical delivery methods for medical cannabis and Vertanical set to launch an oral extract for lower back pain in the German market, Adomeit questioned the velocity behind this trend.
“I doubt that (the Vertanical) product is a substitute for patients who currently use flower because of the different, let’s say, onset time of the product,” he continued.
“So I’m not sure what the impact at the flower market will be, but for the extract market, it will have an impact.
“And of course, it’s good to have new products where you put in a lot of effort to prove that the product actually works. So a lot of scientific effort is gone into the product, so that’s a good thing. The question is, what will be the impact? For flower, I don’t see a high impact yet of this product.”
Nevertheless, he went on to say that he believes ‘more finished pharmaceutical products will have an impact and take more of the market over time.’
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High Tide takes a stake
It was back in 2018, when Germany first permitted medical cannabis, that Adomeit and his business partner Francesco Baganz established Remexian.
Prior to that, Adomeit had been involved in businesses which imported pharmaceuticals from other European countries and then relabelled and sold them domestically.
This time last year multi-platform Canadian cannabis outfit High Tide took a 51% stake in Remexian, with the partnership seemingly delivering dividends.
He said: “So we had some reservations when a huge Canadian company approached us to buy us because we are small. We still are around 35 employees, and High Tide has 2,000 employees, much bigger, and we had our reservations. But so far we are happy, I must say. We work closely.
“They understand our business, and whenever we say, ‘no, that’s not working in Germany,’ they listen, and we can adapt what the plans are to what we need here in Germany.
“With 35 employees we are able to run a very lean team. I think that’s the main thing that attracted High Tide. And, our approach has been to offer products which are affordable for patients who have to pay for themselves.
“So affordable pricing and the lean structure, which you need for affordable pricing if you do that as a business model, I think that’s attracted High Tide, because that’s more or less High Tide’s approach in Canada, too.
“Even though it’s a retail business and we are pharmaceutical cannabis, it’s the thinking behind lean structure and strong execution. I think that’s what attracted them.”
