Moosehead Teams Up With Vancouver Company To Sell Cannabis-Infused Drinks
Saint John-based Moosehead Breweries is forming a joint venture with Sproutly, a Vancouver-based cannabis company with a production facility in Toronto, to develop, produce and sell non-alcoholic, marijuana-infused beverages in Canada.
The joint venture, which will be headed by Moosehead senior executive Matthew Oland, will use Sproutly’s proprietary and naturally-produced water-soluble cannabinoid in the beverages.
“I think as a brewery we’ve been around for 152 years and we’ve always focused on really trying to listen to our consumers. And what we’ve noticed as we’ve investigated this space for the last year or so is that Canadians are becoming much more accepting of cannabis,” Oland said to Huddle.
“So for us, as we investigated the space and we came into contact with our partner Sproutly who have this great technology that allows you to get the cannabis effect in a beverage in less than five minutes, that’s a significant change in typical cannabis beverages.”
The Infuz2O technology is a cannabis solution that fully dissolves in water that doesn’t use added chemicals. It can deliver the cannabis strain experience that can currently only be gained through smoking, the companies say. It provides an immediate and controllable cannabis effect that lasts up to 90 minutes.
This onset and offset time is similar to consuming cannabis flower, unlike oil-based edibles and beverages which could take more than half an hour before the effects can be felt.
The companies say this can help address the industry challenge of overconsumption of oil-based edibles and beverages. It also provides the capability to produce a clear cannabis beverage that is a lot easier and faster to formulate compared to those using emulsifiers, encapsulation or chemical modification techniques, among other things.
“Essentially what the infuz20 technology is, it’s taking all of the components of THC and all of the components of the cannabis plant and allowing them to be naturally converted into a liquid format. So you’ll get the benefits of the THC but you’ll get the other strain-specific benefits as well,” Oland explained.
“The great thing is that you’re going to get that in five or six minutes as opposed to waiting 40 minutes and when you have to wait 40 minutes for effects to happen, often times people can overdose, they can have too much. So we think that that short onset is really important.”
The joint venture will be half-owned by Moosehead and half owned by Sproutly and be based in Toronto, where Oland is also based.
As CEO of the joint venture, Oland, who previously served as VP of Supply Chain for Moosehead, said he’ll bring in more than 20 years experience in the consumers packaged goods sector. That ranges from marketing and sales, brand building, bringing products to market, and logistics and transportation.
While he never lived or worked in Saint John as he had spent 90 per cent of his career in Toronto and the rest in Halifax, Oland said he would often fly to Moosehead’s home base.
“I had across Canada responsibility for distribution and warehousing, and so I had a team in Toronto and also a team in Saint John, so I was in Saint John, flying down probably every two weeks, whether that was to manage the business, or also obviously to see my family,” he said.
Now he’ll be focusing on the new joint venture and bringing the beverages to market, though he couldn’t share whether the products will be ready when edibles become legal on October 17.
Moosehead will provide infrastructure support including research and development, operations, procurement, finance, and distribution, which will allow the joint venture to fast-track its go-to-market strategy. And Sproutly’s cultivation facility and processing license will advance the formulation work that has already been completed until now.
The joint venture will focus on the Canadian market, to begin with, Oland said.
“That’s the focus that both parties have is just, let’s make this work in Canada, let’s maximize the opportunities in Canada and we’ll go from there,” he said.
“Moosehead is a truly iconic brand and we are very excited to partner with a company that possesses such deep-rooted Canadian heritage and over 152 years of history in the beer industry. Partnering with a company of this calibre is a strong validation of APP Technology and Infuz20,” said Spoutly CEO and Director Keith Dolo in a release.
“This partnership with Moosehead marks an important milestone in Sproutly’s mission of delivering a safe and consistent whole plant experience from cannabis, with a lead position in the beverage market. We have developed a relationship with Moosehead built on trust and our shared vision of creating safe, responsible and high-quality cannabis beverages and we look forward to making this a reality for Canadian consumers,” he said.
Before it can be formalized, the joint venture still needs to satisfy conditions that include the execution and delivery of various transaction agreements, governance documents and supply agreements. The companies plan to form the joint venture on or before May 31.