News story selected by América Retail: Katherine Palacios
Avicanna made its first seed export to Argentina. This year, they expect to sell US$300.000 worth of this product abroad.
By sending a batch of 100.000 cannabis seeds from Colombia to Argentina, the Avicanna company achieved the first Colombian export of the product to that country. This milestone comes one year after the first shipment of seeds of this type to the United States.
According to the company, exports to Argentina were achieved after the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) reviewed the respective phytosanitary requirements. Thus, the Argentine and North American markets joined Peru and Uruguay as countries that have opened their doors to Colombian cannabis seeds.
How's business going?
Avicanna is a Canadian biopharmaceutical company that arrived in Colombia four years ago. Today, it has five hectares of cannabis planted in the municipality of Bonda, Magdalena, where it cultivates, develops, and markets cannabis-derived products for medical purposes, generating approximately 100 jobs.
Each cannabis seed costs around $1 and is used in other countries for recreational or medicinal cultivation.
Lucas Nosiglia , president of Avicanna in Latin America, stated that they had been working for three years on a plant breeding program, in order to obtain seed varieties adaptable to other environments that work, for example, under relatively high humidity conditions.
“One of the advantages of Colombia is that it has 12 hours of sunlight year-round. We produce feminized seeds, which are used to produce medicinal cannabis. These have a THC content of less than 0,3%, which defines a non-psychoactive variety. Our investment in Colombia amounts to US$30 million,” Nosiglia noted.
Among the opportunities for the business to grow, Nosiglia explained, is the need that some producing countries have to access seeds in the middle of their winter cycle.
Therefore, despite the pandemic, Avicanna's 2020 results were positive. That year they sold 7 million cannabis seeds abroad; an amount that, according to Nosiglia, was "exceptional." For 2021, the estimates are more cautious. The company expects to end the year with US$300.000 in export sales and its goal is to become a major genetics center in the country.
There is still a long way to go
One of the cannabis industry's requests is its inclusion in the country's official statistics. According to Rodrigo Arcila , executive president of the Colombian Association of Cannabis Industries (Asocolcanna), no progress has been made on this. "To obtain more accurate data, like that available for coffee, we made this request to DANE (the National Administrative Department of Statistics). It's difficult to know, for example, how many companies are dedicated to seeds or the total production and exports," he said.
For his part, Diego Ruiz , CEO of FCM Global, a medicinal cannabis corporation, said that the seed business still needs further development, as seeds only represent 5% of the cannabis industry; the other 95% is made up of distillates, isolates, or final products.
Finally, Arcila and Mejía agreed that seeds are not yet seen as a major focus within the cannabis industry, due to the lack of companies focused on exports to this type of market.
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