In a recent
Stockhouse DEALROOM article, we introduced our investor audience to a ground-floor cannabis play that ticks a lot of boxes when looking for value and opportunity in a rebounding sector.
With offices in Australia, Canada, and Colombia,
Dona Blanca Ltd. (
P.DBL,
Forum) is a privately held, soon to be publicly-listed cannabis cultivator that’s growing high-quality cannabis under Good Agricultural and Collecting Practices (GACP) standards and offers pharmaceutical grade cannabis products and derivatives, leveraging one of the world’s most capital-efficient jurisdictions. With considerable experience and expertise in cultivation and extraction, the company is set to export its cannabis flower and White-label medically graded cannabis oil extracts to the world’s most lucrative and profitable markets.
The How and Where
With cultivation facilities located in some of the most fertile soils on the planet – the Colombian flower and coffee regions of South America – the company says it’s currently poised to “provide high quality growing and extraction services to the rapidly evolving cannabis flower and derivative industries for export to global markets.” The cannabis growing conditions in Colombia are naturally optimal (temperature, humidity, and daylight hours) without requiring any simulated conditions like artificial light or temperature control. In turn, this allows for the lowest cost production in the industry, with up to five (5) harvests per season and two large crops in the ground at present.
In short, Colombia is a literal Garden of Eden when it comes to the cost-effective growth and cultivation of premium quality cannabis. And Dona Blanca is located in the heart of this ideal agricultural region and…with a proven cost-per gram among the lowest on the planet for producing some of the best outdoor cannabis anywhere.
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In the News
Step 1: With the tabling of the U.S. federal
SAFE Banking Act before congress, cannabis companies of all size and scope will now have better access to traditional commercial banking and financial investment from established capital sources (all contingent upon passage of the bill and subsequent enactment into law). This is huge news for investors and could lead to eventual legalization of adult-use cannabis at the federal U.S. level, arguably opening up the world’s largest marketplace to both consumers and investors of all stripes. Publicly-traded stock and private equity capital will be measured in the tens of billions of dollars flowing into the sector – everything from credits cards, bank accounts, and loans to enormous institutional investment.
Step 2: The
More Act of 2020 (H.R.3884). Now, cannabis activists and likeminded legislators have a legal framework and tabled bill that will, ostensibly, lead to federal decriminalization of marijuana in the U.S. At press time, the bill has garnered "
broad bipartisan support", and there were 152 cosponsors at the time of the committee vote – over a third of the entire House of Representatives. This a godsend for low-cost, and high-margin cannabis producers like Dona Blanca that have the existing infrastructure, optimal growing conditions, and sound business model in place to meet this potential massive demand for high-quality cannabis.
Investors Corner: A True Growth Opportunity
For would-be investors, Dona Blanca is a science-based cannabis play that provides a full supply chain from farm to lab with exports to cannabis markets worldwide. This includes breeding, cultivation, post harvesting, extraction, and product development. Let’s take a deeper look at each of the Company’s verticals –
- EUROPE: Widespread regulatory transitioning as regulators begin to adopt cannabis friendly policies¹.
- ASIA: South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore are currently funding research on the benefits of cannabis in an effort to legalise cannabis² for both medicinal and recreational use.
- ISRAEL: Over 100,000 medicinal cannabis users with imports of dry flower cannabis in 2020 surpassing 7.35 tonnes ³.
- AUSTRALIA: Canberra, Australia’s capital city, has become the first city to legalise possession of up to 50 grams of dried flower for recreational use. In lieu of traditional forms of treatment, there is a growing consumer shift in favour of cannabis-based alternatives.
From the CEO
Stockhouse Editorial, recently sat down with Santiago Piedrahita, CEO of Dona Blanca, to discuss a variety of timely and newsworthy topics for our investor audience including a history of the company, what they’ve accomplished to date, and his vison of it moving forward. Fluent in both Spanish and English, Mr. Piedrahita earned an MBA from the Hult International Business School with a background in project finance, energy, mining, and agriculture. He has over 11 years’ experience developing energy projects with multiple stakeholders including government, banks, and communities in Latin America. Skilled in seeing the big picture, performing scenario analysis, and evaluating risks, Mr. Piedrahita has also served on boards of energy companies, NGO’s, and financial institutions.
SH: To start off with, Santiago, can you tell a little bit about yourself and the history of the company.
SP: All right. So, for myself, I'm Colombian…and born and raised here. My family has been involved for close to 20 years in the agriculture business. We have our main business here in Colombia and we jumped into the cannabis industry about six years ago, something like that. We started on this with some Canadians. Now we have a hundred-plus investors, probably 120 specifically. Most of those guys come from Colombia, around 40% of the investors are Colombian. And then we have 40% Australian. And we have about 20% that is either European, Canadian or American, depending on where we are. The company has a rich operational nest for cultivation. The money that we'll continue to raise during this year will be used to complete our cultivation and production facility that will be of the highest standards possible in the industry.
SH: What can you tell our investor audience about the advantages of cultivating in Colombia versus, for example, here in Canada or even the U.S. and the various states where it's legal. So why you focused on global markets instead of North America?
SP: Very good question. So, one of the founders of the company, the early investors said that there's a reason you don't grow bananas in Canada. Too cold. Right? I think that's explains everything, but I think what if you cut the cost of a gram or the value of a gram in three, you'll have energy, you’ll have manpower, then you will have infrastructure, right? Then there’s the cost of labour. I'm not an expert specifically in Canada, but I suppose it's around 15 to 20 dollars per hour, right? In that range for rent, labor into a greenhouse per hour in Colombia is about 300 dollars per month. So, anything that you're doing with non-skilled labor is much cheaper. That’s a fact. It's competitively probably 30% to 40% cheaper than if you were doing it in North America. So, in Colombia when it comes to energy you don't need to heat up the greenhouses. You don't need to put in lighting. So, no need to heat up the water to irrigate the plants during the winter because there its no winter, we are almost on the equator. Colombia average sunlight is about 10-and-a-half to 11 hours per day. So you don’t need to adjust the lighting for any reason. It's just going to be for a couple of hours or a couple minutes, and it will give you the flexibility. And the second one will be infrastructure. The type of greenhouse that we use is a plastic; it's a light greenhouse. It's not a big, expensive warehouse. So, once again, on the cost of the gram, on that’s cheaper. It is what it is. And I won’t see this industry growing cultivation in the US in the next five years.
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SH: So let’s get to big news, the company intends to trade on the TSX Venture under the ticker DBL soon. Can you offer us some more details on this and when the listing is going public?
SP: We are in the process and we’ve now completing the private raise to list. We have most of our paperwork done, also we need to time the momentum of the market. That been said, I expect that to happen before the summer ends
.
SH: As the cannabis sector gains more and more traction internationally, how do you see your company as a game-changer within the current marketplace status quo, and if so, how do you create a competitive advantage for the Company moving forward?
SP: Well, we are focused on where we have competitive advantages. We’ve been focused on our scope and light on our cash burn rate. Keep in mind we have completed our cultivation CAPEX.
SH: And finally, can you tell our audience a little bit about your corporate management team, along with the experience and innovative ideas they bring to the retail cannabis space?
SP: Well, most our operation team has been already in the space, so our CTO, CFO already have been involved in the industry, so they already had the level of expertise and knowledge required.
From our board of directors, we have people with expertise in capital markets, but also with expertise in the pharmaceutical and health industry which gives us a very unique network.
The Bottom Line
An established agricultural company, Dona Blanca’s mission statement is a simple, yet effective, one: Grow. Extract. Export. It is this forward-thinking philosophy and established business plan that often separates the pretenders from the contenders in the competitive cannabis space.
For savvy investors in the re-emerging cannabis sector looking for real value and opportunity in a ground floor play, Dona Blanca Ltd. is the kind of multi-national company with established production facilities that appears to have positioned itself seamlessly to emerging global markets.
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To find out more about this Company, the people behind it, its operations, and full investment proposition, visit their website
www.donablanca.com.au.
1. Global Cannabis Market by Application (Medical, Recreational), Product Type (Flowers, Concentrates), Compound (THC-dominant, CBD-dominant, Balanced THC & CBD), and Region (North America, South America, Europe, RoW) – Forecast to 2026.
2. Prohibition Partners Global Cannabis Report.
3. Deloitte – Israel a world leader in cannabis.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.