108 | BUSINESS Ora Pharm T T Kim Newth Growing market for medicinal cannabis From left: Stuart Wilcox (Ora Pharm Chair), Blake Smith (Ora Pharm CSO), Andrew Bayly (MP for Port Waikato), Michael Vukcevic (Ora Pharm Advisor), Zoe Reece (Ora Pharm CEO) and Nadia Scott (Ora Pharm Director). As awareness and acceptance of medicinal cannabis grows in New Zealand, so too is there rising demand from both the medical community and patients for reliable medicinal cannabis products. In the Waikato, Ora Pharm is on a fast track for growth as it moves ahead with sustainable production of high-quality medicinal cannabis, backed with industry experience from the North American market. Ora Pharm founder and CEO Zoe Reece is a Kiwi-born engineer who previously worked as director of engineering at Curaleaf, a large US-based legal cannabis company. Zoe played a lead role in the company’s expansion in the North American market. Ora Pharm is chaired by Stuart Wilcox, former Chief Operations Officer of Curaleaf. “Stuart and I helped to set up their operations in the United States, so we have done this before,” says Zoe. “It’s bread and butter for us. Today, Curaleaf is the largest legal cannabis company in the world. Compared to the US market that has different regulations in every state, this is an easier place to operate in. Our goal is to help meet the health and wellbeing needs of New Zealanders. From here, we can also export to the rest of the world.” Ministry of Health data highlights growing demand for medicinal cannabis in New Zealand with almost 64,000 units sold last year compared to just over 2300 units in 2018. In Australia, nearly half a million patients are now actively using medicinal cannabis or have been legally prescribed it. “We are in a unique position to make high quality medicinal cannabis at a much lower cost than all our competitors in New Zealand because of our technology, our experience, the way we grow and our process, which is very sustainable and environmentally friendly. For example, we harvest all water off the greenhouse roof and maximise our use of the sun to grow the plants.” Ora Pharm’s greenhouse is currently producing a harvest of around 20-25kg every two to three months. The next step is to build a much larger second greenhouse to scale up production to around 400kg a month to meet existing export contracts. “We anticipate that would generate at least 20 full-time jobs.” Last year, Ora Pharm received a $140,000 development grant from Callaghan Innovation, bringing the company’s research and development investment to around $300,000. Trials of a proprietary cultivation process are going well, having produced a 40 per cent increase in yield to date. Ora Pharm is interested in hearing from investors who can help support their ongoing development. The company ran an investor roadshow earlier this year, with plans now progressing to raise capital in New Zealand. Ora Pharm is also in discussion with migrant investors after being named as one of the first approved direct investments under the New Investor Visa category in April. Empowering people to make informed, evidence-based decisions around using medicinal cannabis is a key focus for Ora Pharm. Patients and caregivers can register on their Ora Support education portal. “As an engineer, I want to know how things work. We can’t expect people to adapt to medicinal cannabis without clinical trials and without education. We are already providing a lot of information through that portal on different clinical trials relating to various conditions and how medicinal cannabis may have helped people. It is a way of building better understanding so people can decide if this is something they want to explore further.” CustomMix produces the highest quality growing blends for discerning plant producers. www.custommix.co.nz info@custommix.co.nz Orders & Enquiries - Crystal 021 331 607 Operations - Ash 021 664 229 Technical - Malcolm 021 906 295
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