LeafCann given OK to produce and distribute medicinal cannabis oil from its plant near Adelaide from 2020-21
LeafCann’s plant in South Australia would be one of the world’s first to produce medicinal cannabis products from genetics to patients under international good-manufacturing-practice standards.
Image courtesy The Green Organic Dutchman.
Medicinal cannabis oil was planned to be distributed at cut-price costs to Australian and New Zealand patients in 2020-21 from a warehouse south of Adelaide.
LeafCann Group’s warehouse and distribution plant at an undisclosed site was stage one of a $350m medicinal cannabis-making, -growing and -research precinct – the largest of its kind in Australia. LeafCann projected jobs for 1,000 and supplying 160,000 patients a year.
The South Australian Liberal government granted LeafCann a licence for the warehouse and to distribute cannabis to pharmacies across Australia and New Zealand. This gave it more control over the supply of product quality at affordable prices. LeafCann became the exclusive Australian and New Zealand supplier of certified organically-grown cannabis from Canadian producer The Green Organic Dutchman.
LeafCann’s plant would be one of the world’s first to produce medicinal cannabis products from genetics to patients under international good-manufacturing-practice standards. South Australians suffering chronic pain, nausea, post-traumatic stress disorder and epilepsy complained about the cost and the difficulty of finding a local doctor willing to prescribe medicinal cannabis. South Australian doctors mainly have blamed lack of research and quality control of the product. Most imported medicinal cannabis products cost up to $500 a treatment and many weren’t good-manufacturing-practice certified.
In 2016, the federal law changed to allowed patients to be prescribed medicinal cannabis by doctors. The previous Labor state government set up an office of support industries being set up to cultivate industrial hemp and produce medicinal cannabis.
Entrepreneur Ben Fitzsimons, buoyed by hearing that “Adelaide is known as the Amsterdam of the southern hemisphere”, saw an opportunity for South Australia, encouraged by the legalised recreational cannabis industry boom in American states Colorado and Oregon. Fitzsimmons and partner/financier Shane Yeend approached the Jay Weatherill government with plans to occupy half of Holden’s doomed 25-hectare car making plant at Elizabeth to create 2,500 jobs bonanza and an $800 million industry for northern Adelaide. This relationship fell apart when the government ruled out the Holden plant as a site to cultivate cannabis.
Elisabetta Faenza, chief executive of Australian medicinal cannabis company LeafCann, built a career in clinical hypnotherapy involving dietary supplements, before turning to the commercial possibilities of medicinal cannabis – that had helped her overcome seven strokes. In 2016, Faenza was working with a team to identify Australian sites and scan the international market for the best production methods.
In 2017, with a licence from the national office of drug control, LeafCann looked at Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales to its seed-to-sale medicinal cannabis plant. Steven Marshall Liberal government’s enthusiastic support won LeafCann’s choice of a South Australian site.