A joint venture! Agency on a roll in medical cannabis experiment

Savills has smoked out another money-making opportunity with a new enterprise which it claims has “enormous growth potential.”

The property consultancy is teaming up with Hanway Associates - which it describes as “a cannabis strategic consultancy” - and a glass-house builder called CambridgeHOK.

Together they have created something called Crop17 which will offer “an end-to-end solution for investors and businesses wishing to capitalise on the enormous growth potential of the UK’s medical cannabis market.” 

The new team will specific geographical information about potential cultivation sites as well as a regulatory and operational consultancy to advise investors. 

Savills director Alex Bragg says: “The UK agriculture sector is embarking upon a period of unprecedented change. A phasing out of subsidies, a new dawn for trade, adapting to meet climate change targets and a huge growth in ag-tech presents the industry with huge challenges and opportunities. For the forward thinking and innovative farmer and grower adapting into new markets is a key priority.”

A Savills statement announcing the new enterprise cites BDS Analytics as forecasting that the worldwide legal cannabis industry generated revenues of about £11.5 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to circa £35 billion in the next four years. 

“The potential margins from growing medical cannabis are more lucrative per gram for a grower than strawberries” says the statement.

In believes that the total number of medical cannabis prescriptions issued in the UK could surge from a few hundred in 2019 to more than 185,000 by the end of 2023 if the country follows a similar path to Australia, whose medical cannabis programme has grown rapidly since the government relaxed restrictions in 2018.