A groundbreaking marijuana joint venture has been created.
Three leading international cannabis businesses are pooling their intellectual property and technology to create products for the global marijuana market, starting with Canada.
Under the joint venture, Ontario’s Canopy Growth will give ownership stakes in one of its wholly owned licensed medical marijuana producers to Amsterdam’s Green House Brands and Denver-based Organa Brands.
In exchange for a stake in Agripharm, Green House and Organa Brands have granted an exclusive, royalty-free licence to the Ontario cultivator to use their technology, trademarks, genetics and other intellectual property.
The joint venture will create a Canadian base for both Green House – which owns Strain Hunters, Green House Seed Co. and King of Cannabis – and Organa Brands, a provider of vape pens, edibles and other infused products.
The two companies plan to use the partnership as a springboard to access the global market by leveraging Canopy’s international operations in Canada, Australia, Germany and other nations.
“Branding and distribution are going to be key to success for cannabis businesses. Those factors are going into this relationship (the joint venture),” Arjan Roskam, founder of Green House Brands, told Marijuana Business Daily on Friday at MJBizCon in Las Vegas. (The event is put on by Marijuana Business Daily‘s parent company.)
Green House is aggressively expanding into North America.
Organa Brands, meanwhile, is stacked with industry-leading intellectual property and manufactures products in 12 facilities in 11 states and Jamaica, selling them in over 1,200 retail locations.
“It’s the beginning of a relationship, and these guys have done it long enough and well enough that people want to buy what they do,” Bruce Linton, CEO of Canopy, told an audience during MJBizCon.
The companies hope to exploit international production, product distribution platforms and brick-and-mortar retail locations.
The joint venture will start in Canada.
But the bigger picture is access to international markets – or, as Roskam described it, “dispensaries on the moon. There’s no limit.”
Chris Driessen, president and owner of Organa Brands, told Marijuana Business Daily at MJBizCon that everything from standard operating procedures to intellectual property are going into the venture – “and mostly that’s involving our extraction methods and formulations around our products.”
“The sky is the limit when you have three of the most influential cannabis brands in the world that are unifying to start the process of global expansion, starting in Creemore, Ontario,” he added.
What you need to know about the deal:
- Agripharm has a 20,000-square-foot indoor growing facility in Creemore, Ontario.
- Agripharm will not conduct any business in the United States.
- Canopy will retain 40% ownership of Agripharm, while Green House and Organa Brands will own 40% and 20%, respectively.
Matt Lamers can be reached at [email protected]
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https://mjbizdaily.com/3-medical-marijuana-titans-team-epic-partnership-ontario-serve-global-market/
