U.S. cannabis firm Agrify announced on Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to supply cannabis production and extraction equipment to Ora Pharm, a New Zealand-based health and wellness brand developing capacity to produce high-quality sustainable medicinal cannabis.
Under the terms of the deal valued at $1.625 million, Ora Pharm has agreed to purchase 20 vertical farming units (VFUs) to grow
from Massachusetts-based Agrify to outfit a 5,000-square-foot state-of-the-art cultivation facility planned for Auckland, New Zealand.“Quality and consistency are frequently cited as top priorities for the world’s leading cannabis operators, and it is absolutely imperative for companies like Ora Pharm that are dedicated to patient care and supplying the market with medicinal cannabis and CBD products to do everything possible to foster pleasant user experiences and repeatable results,” Raymond Chang, CEO of Agrify,
from the company. “Furthermore, for our international customers that must contend with higher Good Manufacturing Practice (“GMP”) standards, it is especially critical for them to leverage cultivation and extraction solutions that offer precise control and data collection.”Agrify Brings Innovative Tech to New Zealand Medical Cannabis
The deal also includes the purchase of innovative cannabis extraction technologies from Agrify, including a
, a and the . Additionally, Agrify will provide access to its fully integrated Agrify Insights seed-to-sale automation software for five years in exchange for monthly recurring software as a service (SaaS) licensing fees. In a statement, Agrify wrote that the cultivation and extraction solutions included in the deal “will form a robust ecosystem to give Ora Pharm complete and precise control over the full life cycle of its botanicals from new plants to finished products and should enable Ora Pharm to achieve new operational efficiencies and better overall results.”
“At Agrify, one of our core goals is to provide our customers with the tools needed to maximize quality, consistency, and yields, all at the lowest cost of production, and we believe that our cultivation and extraction solutions will be instrumental in helping Ora Pharm become a leader in the cannabis sector for many years to come,” Chang added. “Within the last few months, we have successfully entered two new international markets, first Portugal and now New Zealand, and as cannabis liberalization and legalization movements continue to gain momentum globally, we intend to achieve even more strategic growth abroad in the future.”
Global Cannabis Market Worth $61 Billion By 2026
With the global cannabis industry expected to be worth $35 billion this year and $61 billion by 2026, according to market
, Ora Pharm’s home in the Asia-Pacific region positions the company to provide medical cannabis products to a number of emerging markets. Currently, the company has a market presence in Australia, with contracts to expand into the United States, Europe, Asia and its home country of New Zealand.Ora Pharm recently received a grant from Callaghan Innovation, a government initiative to foster innovative business development in New Zealand, to research cannabis cultivation inputs in the country. With the new equipment and technology from Agrify, Ora Pharm will gain new insights to its operations and the ability to verify levels of active ingredients in its products. Zoe Reece, founder and CEO of Ora Pharm, said that the new partnership supports the company’s goal of consistently delivering quality cannabis and manufactured products featuring a variety of major and minor cannabinoids.
“From the inception of Ora Pharm, I have placed a relentless focus on leveraging the most efficient and technologically advanced solutions to empower us to deliver premium industry products to our patients and global customers,” said Reece. “We look forward to further enhancing our capabilities in a major way with the addition of these Agrify technologies. The Agrify VFUs and clean extraction technologies will help Ora Pharm’s research and development program in the minor cannabinoids, ensuring that we are able to produce the best quality and value medicinal cannabis.”