Little Green Pharma (LGP) has seen a boost in sales as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, as more people think about buying locally and supporting Australian businesses.
LGP chief operating officer Paul Long told the ABC he believes the boost isn’t necessarily down to higher patient numbers, but a social and economic shift to ‘buying local’ as a result of the pandemic.
“I think Covid has put pressure on supply chains, so companies that have been importing products from outside Australia, and particularly from Canada… have seen some challenges, with some outages of product,” he said.
“There’s also been this feel of ‘let’s support locally grown, let’s support Australian business’, so we’ve benefited from that throughout Covid and seen an uplift during the last two to three months.
“Since we started in August 2018 we’ve had just over 6,500 patients, but in the last three months alone we’ve seen 1,300 new patients.
Long said demand had been growing since before the pandemic with LGP focused on the potential of the domestic market, despite export prospects ramping up in Europe.
He added: “Expert reports show that medicinal cannabis products get to about one to two per cent of the population, so if you look at total numbers in Australia, we’ve got a long way to go in that growth, which is exciting for the industry as a whole.”
