In the east German countryside, close to Dresden, a former abattoir is now home to the biggest indoor cannabis farm in Europe.
Behind the recently renovated concrete walls, German start-up Demecan has been growing marijuana in accordance with the law for the past year.
The company is one of only a handful in Germany to have a license for the production of “green gold,” which has been legal in Germany for medicinal use since 2017.
Photo: AP
However, the budding industry is eyeing a bigger prize: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government plans to legalize the drug for recreational use as soon as 2024, which would leave it with one of the most liberal cannabis policies in Europe.
Inside the building, the smell of the plants — lined up in their hundreds under yellow grow lamps — is overwhelming.
“We will have the option to expand the facility to cultivate recreational cannabis,” Demecan managing director Philipp Goebel said.
The government coalition, led by Scholz’s Social Democrats, has put forward a road map for the legalization of cannabis with a target date of 2024.
Under the draft plans, adults would be allowed to hold a maximum of between “20 and 30 grams” of cannabis for private consumption via a network of licensed stores and pharmacies.
Demecan’s massive complex, which covers about 120,000m2, produces 1 tonne of cannabis a year, but it has yet to reach capacity.
The company could quickly increase production “10-fold” to meet growing demand, Goebel said.
Harvests at the farm happen every two weeks, with workers plucking the flowers from the plant stems before they are dried.
“I like this job a lot, it is not like any other,” said 34-year-old Sven Skoeries, who studies horticulture alongside his responsibilities at the farm.
Demecan has no trouble recruiting for its growing business in a region otherwise marked by an aging population and lack of workers.
“It’s a trendy product that generates a lot of interest,” Goebel said.
“It’s a new industry, that’s interesting for me,” says Jana Kleinschmidt, 25, as she snips off leaves with a pair of scissors.
As well as its own production efforts, Demecan has a license for annual imports of 20 tonnes of cannabis from Canada.
“We are currently supplying 55 percent of the German market,” Goebel said, adding that his firm is in “pole position” to capitalize on legalization.
The recreational cannabis market in Germany is a potential 4 billion euros (US$4.2 billion) business, a study by the Heinrich Heine University in Duesseldorf showed.
In the past few months, fundraising in the sector has taken off as businesses await the green light from lawmakers.
Berlin start-up Cantourage, a manufacturer of cannabis-based medicines, last month floated 15 percent of its shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Cansativa, the only online platform for the sale of therapeutic cannabis products in Germany, raised US$15 million in February with the help of US rapper Snoop Dogg.
Sanity Group, a German company that focuses on cannabis-derived products, likewise raised US$37.6 million in September.
Legalization looks like a good deal for the government, too.
The Heinrich Heine University study estimated that the move would boost public finances by 4.7 billion euros per year.
However, the idea remains controversial.
At the end of October, German Medical Association head Klaus Reinhardt called the plans “almost cynical.”
It was “shocking” to legalize a substance that could “lead to behavioral problems in adolescents, as well as addiction and psychological changes,” Reinhardt said.
Opposition parties have also set themselves against the move.
Bavarian State Minister of Health Klaus Holetschek, a member of the Christian Social Union party, called the idea “a dangerous signal for all of Europe.”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) removed former minister of foreign affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) from his post after an investigation concluded that he had conducted an affair and fathered a child while serving as ambassador to the US, the Wall Street Journal reported. Top officials were told in August that a CCP inquiry into Qin uncovered “lifestyle issues,” the newspaper reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the situation that it did not describe. That phrase usually means sexual misbehavior of some type in the parlance of Chinese officialdom. Two of the people said the affair led to the birth of a child in
NO MORE LONG LINES: Swift border crossings for people traveling between Russia and areas it occupies in Ukraine show how quickly Moscow is seeking to absorb them To enter Russia from occupied Ukraine, all Tatiana has to do is arrive at the edge of the war-battered Donetsk region, show guards her Russian passport, say “thank you” and cross. Moscow has controlled several key border points since 2014, but the frontier has become more porous since the Kremlin annexed four Ukrainian territories last year, encouraging residents to take up new citizenship. “It’s become more comfortable because we’ve become Russians,” said the 37-year-old, who is from a Russian-occupied town. Tatiana used to have to go through a more arduous procedure to enter Russia: a check run by Moscow-sponsored separatists, then through Russian
GUNNED DOWN: The Canadian PM said there were credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey on June 18 India yesterday dismissed allegations that its government was linked to the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada as “absurd,” expelling a senior Canadian diplomat and accusing Canada of interfering in India’s internal affairs. It came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described what he called credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an advocate of Sikh independence from India who was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a
SECURITY: Wang met with the US national security adviser in Malta over the weekend, with the US side noting the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday headed to Russia for security talks after two days of meetings with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan over the weekend in Malta. China’s top foreign policy official will be in Russia until Thursday for a round of China-Russia strategic security consultations, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement. The US and China are at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China has refrained from taking sides in the war, saying that while a country’s territory must be respected, the West needs to consider Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s
RSS