Medicinal cannabis firm Rua Bioscience plans to list

Tuesday, 18 August 2020

Rua Bioscience’s Chief Research Officer Dr Jessika Nowak analysing cannabis flower at the company's testing lab.

Medicinal cannabis firm Rua Bioscience has been given the green light to begin commercial production and plans to list on the stock exchange later this year.

The company, which has been licenced to produce cannabis-derived medicines, has an export deal with German medicinal cannabis distributor, Nimbus Health, and hopes to make its first shipment in the next 12 months.

“Germany is one of the world’s most advanced medicinal cannabis markets. Doctors there prescribe the dried cannabis flower to patients to use primarily for pain relief,'' chairman Trevor Burt said.

Rua Bioscience is an offshoot of Hikurangi Enterprises, co-founded by Manu Caddie on the North Island East Coast.

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The company would follow Cannasouth which launched on the NZX last June with a $10 million share offer. The stock initially traded at 40c, and closed 10 per cent higher on Tuesday at 66c.

Based in Ruatorea on the East Coast, Rua Bioscience was founded in 2016 as a subsidiary of Hikurangi Enterprises, which aims to create economic opportunities for the local community.

Burt said over the last 18 months the business had been building a resilient, sustainable business.

Over $6 million had been invested in two new facilities, an 8,000 square metre cultivation centre in Ruatorea and an extraction and manufacturing facility in Gisborne.  

“Now, with these solid foundations in place, Rua Bioscience is at an inflection point where the business needs to start scaling up and requires funding to support the company into commercialisation and further deliver on its strategy.''

The company plans to initially make CBD oil and dried flower for export, up to 2200 kilograms a year.

''We aim to produce a few hundred kilograms of pharmaceutical-grade dried cannabis flower in our first full year of operation,” chief executive Rob Mitchell said.