Brazilian company GreenCare, controlled by one of the largest global funds specializing in cannabis businesses, Greenfield Global Opportunities, will start selling medical cannabis medicines directly to pharmaceutical retail from August.
Ready-to-delivery sales tend to end the long wait for the drug, which is now imported directly by the patient.
“Exporting the drug directly to each patient is a lengthy process, which has to be approved by Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) and takes 25 days, from the time the item is placed on the plane to delivery in Brazil,” says Martim Prado Mattos, president of the pharmaceutical company and controller of the fund.
Today, the company and most of the market bring this type of medicine to individuals in Brazil from abroad. The drugmaker has 17 cannabis-based drugs produced by suppliers in Colombia, the United States and Israel.
They are stored in distribution centers outside Brazil, and arrive in the country through importation made by individuals – who need to present Anvisa authorization. It is an estimated market of 75,000 patients in the country, and the company already serves around 20,000. With retail sales, it expects to double that share by the end of 2023.
In terms of values, imports currently move R$ 250 million per year, according to data from the Brazilian Association of the Cannabinoid Industry (BRCANN). In five years, Mattos expects the sector to generate R$ 700 million.
“We are going to take a step forward: moving from compassionate use to cannabis regulation”, says the executive, referring to this change in performance from export to retail sale.
He says that the company negotiates the marketing of drugs in retail with five pharmacy chains, and already has a closed contract. But, by business rules, it does not reveal which retailers are.
Business plan
GreenCare has Anvisa’s approval to sell three drugs in pharmacies, and is seeking authorization for three more by December and another four for 2023.
The three products already released for sale in pharmacies contain cannabidiol and different concentrations of THC, the principle that has a psychoactive effect.
Scientific evidence indicates that cannabis derivatives have applications in cases of neurological, autoimmune, psychiatric diseases and chronic pain, but the prescription always depends on the doctor’s evaluation.
With 100 employees, the company’s current focus – whose revenue Mattos does not reveal – is “to create a market” for cannabis-based medicines.
“The bulk of the work now is medical education, disseminating knowledge and formulation, in order to, in a second stage, have local production”, explains the president of GreenCare. There are 50 consultants spread across the country, in contact with a universe of six thousand doctors every month.
Two years ago the company bought a factory in Vargem Grande Paulista (SP) that belonged to pharmaceutical Merck, for which it disbursed a portion of the R$ 50 million invested in the company so far by the fund.
The unit is going through an approval process, and the goal is for the drugs to start being produced locally in two years.
Greenfield Global Opportunities, with legal headquarters in Canada, began operations in 2017 and the following year founded GreenCare. The fund has stakes in 16 companies in the cannabis sector spread across nine countries, which total investments of BRL 260 million.
The fund brings together individual investors and entities. Among individual investors, the majority are Brazilians.
Mattos, fund manager and former CFO of Hypera and responsible for the IPO of the pharmaceutical company, says he decided to work in the cannabis segment as a matter of “moral arbitration”.
“Large pharmaceutical companies preferred not to act on cannabis out of prejudice, for fear of being branded as a pothead company.” The information is from the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
Source: CNN Brasil
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