MJBizDaily launches second edition of its European market overview

On May 6, MJBizDaily issued the second edition of ”Medical Cannabis in Europe: The Markets and Opportunities.”; an updated overview of the medical cannabis markets and regulations in Europe. Alfredo Pascual, an International Analyst for MJBizDaily and co-author, talks about the report and shares some conclusions. “The unstoppable exponential growth of the European markets that many companies often project in their investors’ decks isn’t necessarily based in reality.”

Sales figures

When asked about the most important conclusions from this year’s report, Pascual immediately points at the sales figures. “On a macro level, the main take away is that sales of medical cannabis in Europe continued growing rapidly in 2019, especially thanks to German patients. Italy, which is the second-largest European market, also had double-digit growth over 2018. However, the other side of the coin is that all other European markets remain quite small in comparison.

Unstoppable exponential growth

Another conclusion is that the unstoppable exponential growth of the European markets that many companies often project in their investors’ decks isn’t necessarily based in reality. There are plenty of examples in Europe of markets where for different reasons, sales don’t always follow the exponential growth trend, like Czech Republic from 2015 until 2018, the Netherlands since 2016 or Denmark throughout 2019.
There are also more specific insights readers can find. For instance, that isolated cannabinoids represent a large portion of sales in Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, and the vast majority of sales in Austria where flower or full-spectrum extracts are not allowed. This is often overlooked.”

Revenue-generating opportunities

According to Pascual, the focus of the new report has changed. “One year ago, there was still an incredible amount of excitement about new countries allowing companies to apply for cultivation licenses. So in the first edition of the European report, I made an effort to include at least the basic licensing requirements for growing in some of these countries. But one year later, the focus of the industry switched to revenue-generating opportunities. It’s not really big news anymore if one more country allows companies to apply for a license to grow and export the products. In fact, some of the leading companies in the industry are shutting down some of their grow operations because they realized they had too many. What matters most now is where medical cannabis can be sold. And that’s the focus of this edition of the report: where and how can medical cannabis be sold in Europe.

What didn’t change much from last year’s report are the companies that grow medical cannabis being sold in Europe. There are dozens of projects in Europe and overseas with the goal to supply Germany and other countries with cannabis, but only a few manage to actually do so. Something else that didn’t change from the first edition is that Germany remains the largest European market, even larger than all others combined.”.

Latin America

As mentioned, MJBizDaily issues a report on the Latin American market as well. Alfredo Pascual – who covers both continents – sees some remarkable differences “Revenue opportunities in Latin America are still behind Europe, as many companies and investors see Latin America as a production region mostly to export to other parts of the world. That’s why the Latin American report has a bigger focus on production licensing requirements than this edition of the European report, which focuses on revenue possibilities.

A similarity between both reports is that although these try to provide content about a region, it’s impossible to talk about the European or the Latin American markets. These are huge geographical regions that in both cases have an enormous disparity within their countries and little regional harmonization when it comes to medical cannabis.”