Canadian company partners with AZ medical marijuana dispensaries

In what is a possible international first, a Canadian company has announced it will operate a pair of dispensaries in Arizona through a recently acquired management firm.

The deal, which cost the Canadian Bioceutical Corp. $27 million dollars (CA$35.5 million), also gives the the company ownership of a natural health products company, CGX Life Sciences, as a subsidiary, as well as the rights to license intellectual property from Melting Point Extracts, another Arizona-based medical marijuana company.

The Canadian corporation, which trades on the over-the-counter market under the ticker symbol CBICF, will manage two dispensaries that operate under the brand Health for Life in the Phoenix area. The dispensary licenses will remain with the two not-for-profits that currently hold them, and those organizations will pay the Canadian firm to run the day-to-day operations, said Scott Boyes, the CEO of the Canadian Bioceutical Corp.

The complex deal, which was reported on last week by New Cannabis Ventures, also gives the Canadian firm a launchpad for other cannabis business opportunities throughout the United States, including in Nevada, Maryland and Pennsylvania, Boyes said.

But the entire deal is dependent on approval from the Canadian Stock Exchange, according to the Phoenix New Times.

Regardless of the outcome of the partnership, the deal is a hallmark of how the cannabis industry is continuing to go global, especially given that Boyes said his company raised $27 million in two weeks from investors, all via a London-based capital group. Those investors, Boyes added, included parties from Hong Kong, the Middle East and Europe.

The corporation is not yet one of the 38 licensed MMJ producers in Canada, but it applied for a license in late 2014 and is confident it will eventually receive a permit, Boyes said.