Q&A: with Omar Sacirbey of MJBiz and Bloomwell CEO Niklas Kouparanis, published by MJBiz Daily on 30 July 2024.

Why are you bullish about Germany’s new medical marijuana law?

That is the big game changer.

Medical reclassification means cannabis is no longer a narcotic substance in Germany.

Cannabis can be prescribed as a normal medication similar to ibuprofen, which is very easy to get.

You don’t have to be chronically ill anymore.

You don’t need to have some kind of treatment record proving that you already went to a doctor.

Now, you can get it with a migraine, with a sleeping disorder.

You can get cannabis pretty easily prescribed.

That opens up a total addressable market of around 30 million people in Germany.

Not all of them will consume cannabis, but I expect the market to go from 300,000 patients up to 5 million or 6 million patients in the next 12 to 24 months.

Do you expect new businesses to enter this new medical landscape?

The medical cannabis market needs to have a tremendous amount of patience and regulatory knowledge.

That’s why we don’t see so many companies popping up at the moment.

Over time, I expect some smart entrepreneurs to come into the market.

It will attract a lot, and some will fail.

With 84 million inhabitants, Germany will become by far the biggest medical cannabis market in the world – and, I think, the most attractive in terms of growth for anyone who wants to have a foothold in Germany.

How are Germany’s illicit operators impacting the regulated market?

A lot of people got burned investing in the U.S. and Canadian markets because of the illicit market.

The big difference is that Germany is an import market.

In places like California, cultivation was very expensive because of taxes.

So, the cannabis was very expensive … and it fueled illicit growth.

We don’t have that in Germany.

We import cannabis from Colombia, South Africa, Canada, North Macedonia – very low-cost production countries; not Canada, but the rest – where we can basically import cannabis for a very low price and can offer it for less than the illicit market can.

We offer cannabis for 5 euros ($5.41) per gram on our platform.

The illicit market prices in Germany are 10-12 euros.

Even under GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) regulations, highly regulated, pharmaceutical-grade cannabis already is cheaper than illicit-market prices.

Will there be opportunities for U.S. or other non-German companies?

The development of the U.S market is pretty much stuck.

Everyone in the U.S. is now hoping for rescheduling.

But we are already there in Germany.

The smart players see the market as a global market; they are already approaching us.

Everybody wants to be in Germany now, and they want to be in the medical game because there’s no possibility to get into the recreational game – except for seeds, for example, because there is no real legalized market.

So, yes, 100% there’s big opportunity in Germany.

And I think the future is Europe.

It’s no longer North America.

How will German cannabis reform affect the rest of Europe?

We see it already.

I see the Czech Republic following this model.

We already have decriminalization in Malta and Luxembourg and other small states.

France and Poland are looking at Germany.

The Netherlands already approved pilot projects.

I think the German model is basically becoming the gold standard for European countries.

The Bloomwell Group founder and CEO Niklas Kouparanis,first joined Germany’s medical cannabis industry in 2017 as sales and marketing director at Cannamedical Pharma in Köln before founding Frankfurt-based Farmako in 2018 and then exiting the company in 2019. Since launching Frankfurt-headquartered Bloomwell in 2020, Kouparanis has grown the company into one of Germany’s top medical cannabis businesses.