I've previously held the opinion and posted that I didn't really think that the Australian domestic medical cannabis market was worth investing in, mainly due to the perception that the market is tiny in comparison to overseas opportunities. However today I started looking into it in a bit more depth.
First thing I realized was that Australia is about 2/3rds of Canada’s population so therefore we should still generate at least 2/3rds of the Canadian demand for medicinal cannabis. Here's a table I pulled from the MGC Pharmaceuticals white paper.
Canada now has over 100 000 registered patients as opposed to the 30 000 shown in that table, so we can comfortably triple those figures to be more accurate. This gives us a demand of around 25 000kg per year in Australia. I've used the Canadian figures as they are the lowest of the three examples given so as to not exaggerate the figure. The Israeli model per capita usage for Australia allows for over 31 000kg.
To put this into perspective, Duncan currently produces 1000kg per year pre-expansion, and Lucky Lake when complete 12 000kg.
Patient uptake has the potential to be swift as demonstrated by Canada under MMPR and now ACMPR.
Canada has seen a 12 000% increase in three years, yet this still only represents less than 0.003% of the population.
Once we have more clarity on exactly where we stand on the import situation it would be great to see this addressed more clearly. If allowed, UG could service hopefully a decent market share here in Australia. However if importing is only allowed whilst there is no local supply, setting up a grow facility here could be a viable option.
With United Greeneries being now run by Harvest One could MMJ set up a new Australian based subsidiary to service the domestic market? If the demand is there it is an option that should be looked at. However I still believe it will be a while yet till any MC company has a serious grow operation in Australia.
MMJ Price at posting:
31.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
