Canopy Growth (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC) took another step towards cannabis world domination on Wednesday with a multimillion-dollar deal that brings the Ottawa-area pot producer into its fifth continent.
The Smiths Falls-based company announced it had acquired southern Africa’s Daddy Cann Lesotho, otherwise known as Highlands. The deal, which will see Canopy issue nearly 100 million shares to the sole owner of the Lesotho-based producer, is worth as much as $28.8 million with the firm’s current stock prices.
It’s the first inroad into the African cannabis market for one of Canada’s largest pot producers. Lesotho, a sovereign kingdom contained entirely within South Africa, was the first nation on the continent to legalize medical cannabis in 2017. A release states that the region’s high altitudes and 300 days of sunshine per year provide the ideal conditions for cannabis cultivation.
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Canopy Growth considers the acquisition a strong foothold in southern Africa’s emerging cannabis market, where momentum behind legalizing the drug for medical use is growing.
With this latest acquisition, the small-town Ontario grower’s ambitions of building a global cannabis powerhouse come closer to reality. CEO Bruce Linton made no qualms about his vision for the company while speaking at the Mayor’s Breakfast Series in 2016.
“We want to be really not very Canadian. We want to dominate the world,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to wait around for another country’s cannabis producer to take his company over. Since then, Canopy Growth has spread its seed across Canada and five continents around the world.
With a number of facilities in Ontario and construction underway in the Prairies, British Columbia and Newfoundland, the firm is growing coast-to-coast in Canada. Internationally, Canopy Growth has European operations in Germany, Denmark and Spain; it has a minority stake in an Australian grower; its Bedrocan Canada brand develops cannabis-based pharmaceutical products in Brazil; and the firm even made land in Jamaica earlier this year.
Check out the map below to see where Linton’s quest for world domination has taken Canopy Growth.
