Cannabis: Cann-made marijuana resin could be on the market by March

Cann Group’s (ASX: CAN) manufacturer has started making cannabis resin from the company’s plants, and it should be ready for sale by March.

The resin needs to be tested for stability before being sold as oil and as an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for other products.

These products are intended for sale in Australia and for export.

IDT Australia (ASX:IDT), a $33m pharmaceuticals manufacturer based in eastern Melbourne, has been posting videos on LinkedIn of its cannabis operations, which led to a 37 per cent spike in the price of Cann shares before it went into a trading halt yesterday.

“This represents the first commercial-scale resin extraction from Australian grown cultivars,” Cann said in a statement.

Other companies such as Little Green Pharma are making their own resin from own-grown plants, but on a small scale and not with multiple strains of cannabis.

Cann has 51 harvests, as at December 31, under its belt which is tens more than rivals such as Althea (ASX:AGH) and THC (ASX:THC) which started planting in the last 12 months.

Last year CEO Peter Crock told Stockhead this gave Cann a strong advantage, despite delays to finding a site for it largest growing and manufacturing complex, as the company had years of experience with its in-house varieties of marijuana and had worked through problems arising from growing GMP-grade biological material.

Cann had been negotiating since 2018 to build a large ‘phase 3’ complex on land at Melbourne Airport, but was forced to move to Mildura in early 2019 after plans for the area fell through.

In other ASX cannabis news:

Affinity Energy (ASX:AEB) is still suspended and lost a company secretary this week as well, with Jessica Rodrigues resigning and being replaced by Affinity director Terry Gardiner. Affinity started as an algae energy company before moving on the algae-as-nutraceutical, and then embracing cannabis. It is still trying to find something that works.

Althea (ASX:AGH) has issued its monthly patient numbers update, saying 4,018 people had been prescribed its products between September 2018 and December 2019. Last month also saw prescriptions reach an average of 36 people a day.