Apollon: SA on shopping list after Jamaica

Listed UK pharmaceutical company Apollon Formularies has taken a 49% stake in a joint venture with KwaZulu-Natal cannabis start-up, Tri-Medi Canna (TMC). TMC CEO Bandile says the new company would cultivate, process and distribute cannabis-based medicines through a licensing agreement with Apollon, which provides primary and secondary markets for equity and debt products.

Apollan, which listed on the UK’s Aquis Stock Exchange last year, has a licence in Jamaica to cultivate, research, process and sell medical cannabis therapeutic cannabis products for  various illnesses including prostate and breast cancer. Apollon will earn royalties for patent formulations and any new drug discovery will be under the joint partnership.

According to Businesscann release on 2 March 2022, the deal highlights are:

• “Apollon will receive a gross royalty on sales for all Apollon products sold within South Africa before extending its commercial reach to the wider SADC region under a renewable, mutually exclusive license agreement, the initial term of which is 12 months”;

• “Tri-Medi Canna will become a shareholder in Apollon via share subscription totalling £300,000 over two tranches, the first of which will be for £150,000 at 2.5p per share”.

Mkhize said that the new company would build an EU Good Manufacturing Processes (EU-GMP) facility and would work with emerging farmers and provide training for communities in KZN.

Focus will be on medical cannabis

He said Tri-Medi Canna was established to focus on medical cannabis, a booming industry that the company said is forecast to be worth up to $7.1bn (R113.7bn) in Africa by next year,  with SA potentially accounting for 70% of that.

Stene Jacobs, COO of Apollon Formularies for Europe and Africa, said Apollon had been seeking opportunities to expand its operations internationally so it can make its proprietary medical cannabis formulations for various cancer conditions available to a wider patient base.

He said SA was the first large foreign jurisdiction after Jamaica where Apollon was expanding and it envisaged the local market as a springboard for entry into the rest of southern Africa.

“There is an appetite for what we do. We are already in discussions in Angola,” he said.

Jacobs said the joint venture would include skills transfer and would partner with the University of KwaZulu-Natal and University of Johannesburg to help develop new products.

BusinessDay Live quoted Jacobs on 19 June 2022 as saying the new JV would double the number of patented cannabis formulations owned by Apollon.

Deal will double Apollon’s patented formulations

“We spent the last nine years creating formulations. We have four international patents, and will have four more in the next few months,” he said.

In Jamaica it has its own dispensary and treatment centre, which also caters for patients from the UK and US, said Jacobs. He sees SA providing a similar opportunity for medical tourism in the future.

Jacobs said SA should be an epicentre of growing cannabis, given the favourable climate.  “South Africa has the opportunity to build on its reputation as the regional best-in-class operator and to showcase its already successful cultivation and plant genetics abilities”.