December 25, 2020 | Jpost
Medical cannabis patients in Germany received a welcome gift for Christmas Eve on Thursday after Israel’s leading medical cannabis company, Panaxia, completed its first commercial export of medical cannabis products to the country .Earlier this month, Panaxia announced that they had become the first company in Israel to receive a commercial license from the Health Ministry to export medical cannabis to Germany.
Germany is home to the world’s fastest growing medical cannabis market outside of the United States, with 120,000 patients already being treated using medical cannabis products, paying on average between 2-5 times the amount paid by Israeli patients.A spokesperson for Panaxia said they expect the German market to expand to 800 thousand over the next four years.Panaxia will begin selling a series of premium oil-based medical cannabis products in Germany under the Naxiva-Panaxol brand, which it shares with European pharma giant Neuraxpharm.
Unlike Israeli patients, who receive a prescription mainly based on THC and CBD levels, German doctors prescribe their patients specific products and strains, which makes the strategic marketing partnership with Neuraxpharm vital to Panaxia’s future success or failure in the country.
“Today we are celebrating a success that is the result of hard and continuous work that expresses the strength of Panaxia as a pharmaceutical company in both the business and regulatory fields,” Panaxia Founder and CEO Dadi Segal said on Monday, after the company announced that it’s first shipment had taken off from Ben Gurion Airport.”The German market is a significant growth engine for the company’s operations and we anticipate that the start of commercial sales in the country, together with our strategic partner, Neuraxpharm will begin in the coming weeks,” Segal added.Panaxia became the first company in Israel to receive commercial medical cannabis export permits to Australia and Portugal, handing them a major advantage over its Israeli market competitors, who still rely on profits from the Israeli market alone.
The entrance into the massive German market only furthers the divide between Panaxia and its Israeli competitors, which raises pressure on Israel’s Health Ministry to approve other companies for export, thereby raising Israel’s overall presence in the fast-growing worldwide medical cannabis industry.However, the recent dispersal of Israel’s government, which also left the motion to reclassify CBD as a food additive only a single meeting from approval, may further delay export permits from being issued in the coming months, a move which could entrench Panaxia’s lead in the market.Last week, the company also released its first shipment of samples of medical cannabis tablets and medical cannabis oils to France, as part of a joint bid with Neuraxpharm to participate in a prestigious French government pilot to regulate the country’s medical cannabis industry.