Ganja company Kaya enters export market
Published:Friday | February 7, 2020 | 12:19 AM
Kaya, the first medical marijuana company to open shop in Jamaica two years ago, became an exporter on Wednesday with a shipment of cannabis oil to Cayman Islands.
“Currently, we have three more orders for the remainder of the year, but that can change based on their demand,” said Kaya Chairman and Chief Ganja Officer Balram Vaswani. Those are bound for a company called Blue Water Medical Supplies, also based in Cayman.
Kaya Extracts Limited is also eyeing the Barbados market.
“This marks another milestone as Kaya expands throughout the Caribbean; and we could not be more happy that after all the work with both regulators in the respective countries over the past year, we finally have a framework so that we can continue to deliver consistent medical cannabis extracts from Jamaica to severely ill patients in their country,” Vaswani said.
In Cayman, while medical cannabis oils and tinctures are allowed for legal consumption with a prescription, no local cultivation or production is permitted there. As such, all cannabis products have to be approved by the Cayman chief medical officer prior to import, he said.
Kaya entered the Jamaican market in 2018, and Vaswani currently operates a marijuana farm and three herb houses, the most recent addition being the outlet in Kingston that cost $60 million to set up and was opened for business in December.
“We are still currently in build-out mode, to expand locally and regionally, but are also focused on our road to profitability,” he said.
Kaya Extracts Limited is a fully licensed Jamaican medical cannabis company, with processing facilities for products such as ganja oil, hash, resin, tinctures and topicals.
The company aims this year to increase yields from Kaya Farms to satisfy demand at its herb houses.