KINGSTON, Jamaica – Founder and CEO of Medicanja, the region’s first medical cannabis company, Dr Henry Lowe, called on investors and stakeholders to play up Jamaica’s competitive advantages in the factors of production – land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship – as the ganja industry emerges.

He was speaking at the first Cannabis Business and International Investors Conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston on Wednesday January 28.

In regards to land, Dr Lowe stated that, “because of our climate and soil, Jamaica has a special competitive advantage in using its land to commercially develop and market viable strains. Most of these strains originated right here and were “exported” and hybridized globally. This problem is not special to ganja but we have seen this with our pineapple, periwinkle and even our coffee”.

Dr Lowe noted that proper agricultural and horticultural methods and technology need to be applied in association with cloning and seed hybridization and labelling of plants and the products to ensure authenticity of the Jamaican brand and to secure the supply chain.

Medicanja Limited, according to Lowe, will lead this initiative through strategic partnerships, such as with the University of the West Indies, the Scientific Research Council and the Bio-Tech R&D Institute and Blue Ocean Laboratories in Canada, which will enable them to conduct the research and develop the ‘templates’ of said standardised hybrids.

Looking at labour, Dr Lowe pointed out that, “Current estimated number of jobs to be created by the industry in the US is at 200,000. Again, another competitive advantage for Jamaica is that there is an available, trainable labour force and, more importantly, labour costs in Jamaica are cheaper than that of our competitors.”

He noted that Medicanja is prepared to offer training and education in the emerging industry.

Dr Lowe also highlighted that capital investments are required to push R&D and industrial scale production. He pointed to Phytotech in Perth, Australia whose first public offering to stakeholders of a stake in medicinal marijuana  was three times oversubscribed to A$15million from an initial A$5 million n 2014. Similarly, Lowe said Medicanja Limited will be offering a private placement and floating an IPO within the first quarter of this year.

In the realm of entrepreneurship, Dr Lowe said, “The enabling business environment being created must include simplified global IP (intellectual property) registration and protection of products developed and of Brand Jamaica itself.  Intellectual property protection will be critical at this juncture in order to safeguard against history repeating.”

Dr Lowe later called for an open market concept offering tax breaks to investors in new start-ups and to entrepreneurs that will encourage industry development and initial success.

Dr Lowe reiterated that Jamaica is sitting on a green gold mine, given our international image as the “mecca of ganja”.