Kanabo, an Israel-founded, medicinal cannabis company, is continuing its strategy of finding new ways to interface with consumers—both medical patients and customers of CBD wellness products—in the UK and Europe. It has just launched an e-commerce platform for CBD wellness customers, Kanabo.store, this development following hot on the heels of Kanabo’s purchase last month of The GP Service (GPS), a private tele-medicine and online primary healthcare provider in the UK. According to Kanabo, this acquisition will “establish a new and fully compliant channel to market for Kanabo’s products for medical patients.”
Last September, Kanabo products joined the range sold online through Handpicked CBD, a UK e-commerce site which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Materia, which in turn is subject of a letter of intent to purchase signed by Kanabo.
According to a company report, “The Kanabo.store will cater to the UK market initially and then roll out across Europe, giving CBD consumers access to Kanabo’s three proprietary CBD formula pods that work with Kanabo’s unique VapePod, the first of its kind, medical grade vaporiser that provides easy-to-use metered dosing.”
The three formulae are Relax, Reload and Repair. The 300-dose pods are manufactured in the UK, and offer metered dosing of 1mg on every inhalation, which the company claims is a first.
Kanabo’s founder and CEO, Avihu Tamir, comments, “Our VapePod is a game-changer for CBD consumers who aim to improve their health and quality of life. No other CBD delivery system currently on the market offers the same precise, metered dosing solution that the VapePod consistently provides. We use the highest quality hemp-derived natural ingredients which makes the VapePod the most effective CBD delivery system in the world.”
The precision of dose delivered allows the VapePod to be used for medicinal cannabis, according to Kanabo: “…it allows physicians to now confidently prescribe accurate and precise micro doses of cannabis and collect accurate patient data.”
Kanabo states that it intends to develop GPS into “one of Europe’s first digitally-led and legally compliant providers for Kanabo’s products and wellness CBD services following regulatory approval.” According to Kanabo, GPS is an approved provider on the NHS digital framework for video and online consultations, and can deliver prescriptions electronically to a network of 4,200 pharmacies, both independents and chains, all UK-based and registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council. (GPS’s website today states that it has “over 5,000 partner pharmacies” and “6,000+UK registered pharmacies”.) Patients pay £39.99 for an appointment with a GP (registered with the General Medical Council) within half an hour; prescriptions cost £7.49.
NHS prescribing of medicinal cannabis has proved to be a complex and complicated matter since its legalisation in the UK in 2018, and at present is confined to specialists, not GPs (apart from repeat prescriptions in some instances).
The deal to buy GPS is worth £14 million, according to Kanabo.
Kanabo was the first medicinal cannabis company to IPO on the London Stock Exchange. In February it announced it had completed a £2.25 million fundraising via its broker, Peterhouse Capital Ltd.