As the company prepares its entry into the Australian market, Bazelet Group vice president, business development and marketing Itai Rogel identifies two contrasting strategies to help local businesses stand out from the crowd.
The rising popularity of flower as a dosage form in Australia is putting two contrasting pressures on businesses trying to adapt to the ‘new normal’.
On the one hand, those looking to fulfil this increase in demand need to secure consistent, reliable sources of supply just as reforms to TGO93 make it harder for overseas providers to access the market.
And on the other, companies doubling down on oil need to provide products which stand out from the crowd in a market segment that is becoming increasingly commoditised.
Taking oils first, generally if the product works for them, patients won’t change, they won’t move from one to another. For them, it’s medicine that works, so if it ain’t broke, why try to fix it?
But with so many oil products on the market, the smart strategy is to specialise, to offer products which meet specific needs for specific patients, and do exactly what they say on the tin – every time.
That’s not easy of course. It takes years of study to really understand how terpenes work, how the extraction process impacts the entourage effect, and how to make sure your 10,000th bottle is the same as your first.
At Bazelet Group, we’ve taken different strains, analysed their THC/CBD level and terpene profile, and then extracted them.
We then demonstrated that, during extraction, most of the monoterpenes evaporate, they disappear. So the different strains, after they’re extracted, are basically all the same. If you have an oil that is based on a strain’s name, it doesn’t mean anything. The only thing left is the cannabinoid level. You’ve lost the main terpenes and the profile that has the effect – it’s not the same flower anymore.
That’s the starting point. From there, we reintroduce terpenes to get an optimal entourage effect. It’s about finding the right combination of clinically researched terpenes at a proportion that is similar to what is in the flower – normally around 2% – and then reintroducing it, enriching it into the extract.
That way you get a product that has a medical value, with a formulated combination of terpenes that can be targeted at specific indications.
Take women’s health as an example. The way cannabis affects women is different to the way it affects men. So you need to create a terpene formulation that works for them.
Of course, these are patients for whom oils are likely to be a much more familiar dosage from than flower. They have no interest in creating a whole ceremony around taking the flower, grinding it, and then smoking or vaping it.
Onset times might be faster for patients who inhale, smoke or vape a product based on flower, but we know the effect also lasts for a shorter period of time.
Bazelet Group has conducted research which found patients only get the entourage effect in the first few seconds of inhalation.
Why? Because there are varying temperatures between the cannabinoids and their decarboxylation point. The same goes for the terpenes. They will evaporate in different temperatures.
It’s the same with smoking, the temperature is different, the way cannabinoids flow in a cigarette is very different from a vape. That has formed an important part of our research because we want to create products that have better and longer-lasting effects on patients.
In both cases, we found patients were not really getting the effect they wanted when heating cannabis in this way – as opposed to taking a terpene-enriched cannabis oil where the healing properties of the plant are there at the same time, drop after drop.
That’s not to say there’s not a place for flower of course. But it’s a very different market, with very different patients, so it requires a different supply strategy.
With flower, the market behaves the same way in every country in our experience. Patients are more product agnostic, they’re willing to try different strains – indica and sativa, day and night. If a new strain comes onto the market they’ll want to try it.
So the key here is to make sure you have a wide range and that you can rely on your partner to deliver a regular, consistent supply of finished goods.
“In the battle to win over GPs to the benefits of medicinal cannabis – while also responding to higher patient demand for flower – product innovation is what will help you stand out from the crowd.”
ITAI ROGEL, BAZELET GROUP
This means a firm capable of manufacturing at scale. We have been producing many tons of flower products every year for the past 10 years, and the last thing you want is to end up on Canna Reviews because your supplier stopped delivering the quality your newly acquired patients have come to expect.
Or stopped delivering altogether because they went out of business.
While flower continues to grow in popularity in Australia, oil still dominates the market, whereas in Israel it’s the other way round.
To counter that, and as an example, based on feedback from our salespeople, we decided to create an oil with less focus on the terpene profile and more on its cannabinoid proportions, in order to appeal to flower patients.
The result was a 24% THC oil with 7% CBD which has proved extremely popular with that segment of the market – and their doctors.
In the battle to win over GPs to the benefits of medicinal cannabis – while also responding to higher patient demand for flower – product innovation is what will help you stand out from the crowd.
Bazelet Group has been researching the cannabis plant and the active substances inherent in it for more than a decade. It has developed 84 terpene-enriched oils tailored to the medical and personalised needs of defined patient populations.
Its GMP facility in Israel is the largest in the Middle East and the company implements a strict quality program starting from the seed stage, through research and development to the final flower and oil product.
To contact Itai Rogel about white labelling or distributing Bazelet products in Australia, click here.