Aurora CEO Cam Battley, “Make No Mistake, This Is Going To Become A Large Global Industry, Bigger Than Global Brewing.”
Going Global: Nav Dhaliwal, Supreme Cannabis CEO, Predicts A Global Marijuana Market Worth $180-200 Billion in Ten Years For Medical Marijuana Alone
Aurora CEO Cam Battley, “Make No Mistake, This Is Going To Become A Large Global Industry, Bigger Than Global Brewing.”
Australian Interests Invest in Next Green Wave
Momentum Public Relations
Blog: October 9 2018
If you thought that marijuana was strictly a Canadian game, it’s time to look again. An October 3, 2018 story by Rupert Neate covering the Cannabis Invest conference in the British newspaper The Guardian shows just how quickly the marijuana industry is maturing. It is now as much about globalization as about California or Canada.
Cannabis Invest was a one day conference held in the Mayfair Hotel ballroom in London on October 2, 2018. On October 3, 2018, the conference, designed to provide access and networking opportunities between marijuana industry senior executives and professional investors was held in Geneva. London and Geneva are two of the most important financial capitals of the world.
Once again the Canadian legalization of recreational marijuana on October 17, 2018 was seen as a transformational catalyst as Canada becomes the first G20 country to legalize recreational consumption.
With that given, it comes as no surprise that the majority of companies presenting were Canadian and according to the conference organizers, represented a combined $30 billion in market capitalization, or nearly two thirds of the global marijuana industry. According to The Guardian, some of the UK’s biggest banks and pension funds were in attendance.
Nav Dhaliwal, the CEO of Supreme Cannabis was quoted as saying: “Cannabis is an emerging global market and our thesis is that we are at the beginning of a global rollout. We estimate that the market will be worth $180-$200 billion a year over the next decade just for medical use and cannabis will expand beyond medical use. From pharmaceutical companies to alcohol and tobacco, cannabis is a threat to all those industries.”
Aurora CEO Cam Battley was quoted as saying: “Make no mistake, this is going to become a large global industry, bigger than global brewing and I’ll tell you why. Beer has no legitimate medical applications no matter what we tell ourselves on a Friday evening. There’s money to be made and a lot of it. This is going to be big, you’ll look back on this as a turning point in your investment.
London and Geneva aren’t the only international financial capitals hosting marijuana conferences and seminars for investors eager to catch a piece of the burgeoning global marijuana industry.
On November 1, 2018 CannaTech, a marijuana investor’s symposium will be held at the Hotel W in Hong Kong. While the Chinese will initially invest in Canadian marijuana companies it is also thought that once China allows the use of medical marijuana that the Chinese will start their own marijuana industry. Marijuana is a traditional element in traditional Chinese medicine.
Several Canadian marijuana companies have interests in Australia, where medical marijuana was legalized in 2016 and domestic production was harvested during 2018. Among them are Aurora (ACB), Canopy Growth (WEED), MYM Nutraceuticals (MYM), Aphria (APH) and CannTrust Holdings (TRST). The land down under is often seen as the next best prospect for legalized recreational cannabis.
Given the increasingly global approach to the industry it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Australian money is investing in the North American marijuana industry. You might even call it a vote of confidence.
That confidence can be seen in Next Green Wave, a California-based marijuana company that is set to take the market by storm when it launches on the Canadian Stock Exchange as ticker NGW on October 10, 2018.
During the Spring and Summer of 2018 Next Green Wave raised $21 million and according to The Australian, 80% of that money came from Australian institutional investors.
Next Green Wave is an exceptional and in some ways unique start-up. To begin with, while the company is headquartered in Vancouver its operations are located in Coalinga California. Coalinga is in the middle of California and it is a central distribution hub.
In his interview with The Australian Next Green Wave Executive Chairman Leigh Hughes described California as being the largest and best marijuana market in the world.
The market for marijuana in California is huge. New Frontier Data predicts that it will grow 16% annually, going from US$10.82 billion in 2018, to US$16.02 billion in 2020 and reaching US$ 24.07 billion in 2025.
In contrast, the Canadian marijuana market has been predicted by New Frontier Data to hit $8.6 billion in 2018, rising to $9.2 billion by 2025.
Leigh Hughes went on to say in The Australian that within three months of its market listing Next Green Wave was likely to announce a global expansion. Factors which make the company unique include the possession of four conditional use permits for medical and recreational marijuana permits for cultivation, nursery, volatile and non-volatile extraction and distribution.
According to Hughes no other company has the same number of permits and it reflects Next Green Waves B2B business model. The company expects to start seeing revenues from flower sales early in the first quarter of 2019. However as revenues start to flow Next Green Wave intends to capitalize on its intellectual property.
That intellectual property is largely in the hands of CEO Mike Jennings, a marijuana industry rock star. In the past he co-founded Loud Seeds and has won the High Times Cannabis Cup six times. In 2014 Loud Seeds was inducted into the High Times Seed Bank Hall of Fame. High Times, is a magazine that was founded in 1974 and is regarded as the bible for both the marijuana connoisseur and the marijuana cultivator.
Jennings has many connections in the California marijuana industry and with California marijuana dispensaries. Once the nascent California industry is up and running Next Green Wave will start offering distribution and branding services to other marijuana companies that meet its quality requirements. It will also be opening its seed bank up for prospective growers and refining CBDs for therapeutic applications.
It is these kinds of IP that Hughes is talking about when he talks about access to the Next Green Wave Blueprint and global expansion in The Australian: “it accelerates so many things, such as how to build your facility, how to get from seed to shelf and product development.”
As for the future, Hughes is convinced it will be bountiful: “I recently had brokers and high-net individuals in Australia who missed out on funding rounds asking how they can buy on market. I’ve never had that before and it will not surprise me if post-listing there are more Australian investors who buy in.”
This blog is written for informational and educational purposes only. It should not be construed as investment advice.
- Published in Blog, Marijuana, Next Green Wave