Why Exporting Cannabis to Europe Is Harder Than It Looks: Organigram on EU-GMP, Testing and Supply

Shipping medical cannabis from Canada to Europe sounds straightforward on paper: cultivate compliant flower, test it, package it, and send it overseas.

The physical reality is considerably more complicated.

Cannabis flower can spend weeks moving through an international supply chain before reaching its destination. During that journey, the agricultural product that passed testing in Canada can change, creating regulatory, inventory, and financial risks for producers attempting to serve Europe’s growing medical markets.

For Organigram Global, those challenges have shaped everything from genetics selection and microbial mitigation to its pursuit of EU-GMP certification at its Moncton, New Brunswick, facility.

Max Schwartz, director of investor relations at Organigram, distilled one of the company’s biggest lessons from exporting cannabis to Europe into a simple warning.

“Flower that you test in Canada will not return the same results once it is tested once again at the destination,” Schwartz told IgniteIt.

“You cannot ship an agricultural product through converters overseas over the course of weeks and expect it to be the same when it arrives.”

When Cannabis Changes in Transit

A batch isn’t necessarily finished from a compliance perspective simply because it successfully leaves a Canadian production facility.

The flower still has to withstand transportation, handling, and subsequent testing before it can move through the destination market.

For Organigram, Schwartz said, that has made mitigation at the cultivation and processing level increasingly important.

“What we’ve learned is that you have to have mitigation in place at home,” he said.

One part of that effort begins with the plant itself.

“Through our plant science initiatives and our Moncton facility, we’ve identified cultivars that have a natural resistance to microbial growth,” Schwartz said.

Microbial performance matters because flowers that met specifications earlier in the process may face another test after spending weeks moving through the international supply chain.

Organigram is also developing another line of defense.

“We’ve also identified EU-G compliant remediation pathways that we’re in the midst of standing up,” Schwartz said.

The objective isn’t simply to grow more cannabis. It is to increase the amount of production that can reliably make it through the compliance chain and become sellable inventory in international markets.

“We’re starting to sort of unlock the volumes that we can release,” Schwartz said.

Why Moncton Matters

The next step could be removing some of those intermediate steps altogether.

Organigram is pursuing EU-GMP certification for its Moncton facility. The company continues to identify receipt of that certification as a future event in its latest financial disclosures.

For Schwartz, certification could materially simplify the route between Canadian cultivation and European distribution.

“Once we have that, we can ship flower directly from Canada into Europe, which is a lot faster,” he said.

Currently, Schwartz said, flower can be held with a converter in Portugal before moving onward. That adds transit time and creates the risk that a shipment encounters microbial problems weeks after leaving Canada.

Direct shipments could therefore have implications beyond logistics. Faster movement through the supply chain could reduce the amount of time inventory remains tied up before it can ultimately be sold.

That matters as Organigram expands internationally. In its fiscal third quarter ended June 30, 2026, the company reported $105.8 million in net revenue, up 49% year over year, primarily driven by the addition of Sanity Group. Adjusted gross margin increased to 37% from 34%, with Organigram attributing the improvement partly to a larger proportion of international sales and Sanity’s contribution.

The same quarter also illustrated the working-capital demands of scaling. Organigram used $4.3 million in operating cash after working-capital changes, while inventories and biological assets reached $165.1 million, up 33% from Sept. 30, 2025.

For international cannabis operators, in other words, the amount grown is only one side of the equation. How quickly compliant inventory can move through the system matters too.

Europe Needs More Compliant Flower

The supply constraint also shapes how Organigram views potential new competition.

Schwartz said compliant EU-GMP flower remains tight. That means additional supply entering Europe isn’t necessarily bad news for Organigram, particularly after it acquires Germany’s Sanity Group.

“With Sanity Group, we’ve sort of secured ourselves as a vertically integrated supply chain,” Schwartz said.

Organigram now sits on both sides of the equation: it cultivates cannabis in Canada while Sanity provides a European distribution platform.

“We need more volume,” Schwartz said. “Compliant EU-GMP flower is tight.”

That leads to a somewhat counterintuitive view of additional international supply.

“If more volume can come into the market, and right now part of our business is constrained by slower flower volumes, and suddenly more comes online, well, that’s a net benefit to us too,” Schwartz said.

More supply could create price compression, but Schwartz argues the impact doesn’t necessarily move evenly through the supply chain.

“Even if there is a little bit of price compression, we don’t know if the retail prices are going to come down at the same rate,” he said. “So there might even be some margin capture there as well.”

Organigram therefore views the potential impact of additional compliant supply as, in Schwartz’s words, “neutral to positive.”

The Moat Isn’t Just Cheap Cultivation

That raises a larger question for companies targeting international medical cannabis markets: what creates a durable competitive advantage?

Low-cost cultivation matters, but Schwartz argues Europe’s medical model has barriers that weren’t as pronounced during Canada’s original cannabis buildout.

“I believe that medical markets have a bit more of a moat than what we saw happen in Canada, where it was sort of the green rush, everyone rushing in at the same time,” he said.

“Having EU-GMP is obviously a competitive advantage.”

But Organigram is also betting on genetics.

Its plant-science work isn’t only intended to reduce microbial risk. Schwartz said the company has researched seed-based technology designed to increase consistency and robustness, alongside sensory research examining how particular genetics produce different experiences.

“We have a good idea of what genetics produce what sensory experiences,” he said.

He pointed to high-THCV flower as one example of how cannabinoid profiles could eventually differentiate products for particular medical consumers.

The result is a different competitive equation from simply building more cultivation capacity.

A producer needs to grow efficiently, but it also needs flower capable of surviving a journey of thousands of miles, meeting stringent specifications when it arrives, and moving through a distribution system capable of getting compliant inventory to patients.

For Organigram, those pieces are increasingly connected: genetics and microbial resistance in Moncton, remediation capabilities, prospective EU-GMP certification and, following the Sanity acquisition, distribution infrastructure in Europe.

Organigram’s latest results show why the stakes are increasing. Sanity contributed approximately €25 million (C$40 million) in net revenue from the April 15 acquisition closing through the end of the June quarter, while the company said a higher proportion of international sales helped improve its adjusted gross margin.

Growing cannabis for Europe, then, is only the beginning.

The harder part is getting that flower through the entire journey — compliant, sellable, and economically viable when it reaches the other side.