Medellín authorities seized 2,794 kilograms of beef and pork considered unfit for human consumption during a July 23 operation in the Prado neighborhood, where four people were arrested in flagrante as authorities investigated an alleged clandestine meat-processing operation.

The operation was carried out jointly by the Alcaldía de Medellín, the Policía Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá, the Fiscalía General de la Nación and INVIMA. Authorities conducted two search-and-seizure procedures at the property, which investigators said was being used for the unauthorized slaughter and processing of pork and beef.

According to information released following the operation, the meat had an estimated commercial value of more than more than $108 million COP. Authorities said the property did not have the required authorization to operate and that the meat was being handled and stored under conditions that did not comply with Colombia’s applicable sanitary requirements. Technical inspections determined that the seized products were not suitable for human consumption.

The investigation also raised concerns about where the meat was being sold. Authorities said the products were allegedly being commercialized in the Plaza Botero area and surrounding parts of central Medellín, one of the city’s busiest areas for pedestrians, visitors and informal and formal commerce.

The four people captured during the operation were placed at the disposal of the Fiscalía General de la Nación and face investigation for the Colombian criminal offense of corruption involving food, medical products or prophylactic materials. Their capture and the seizure of the meat do not, by themselves, establish a final judicial finding of guilt.

The case highlights the public-health risks associated with unauthorized meat processing, particularly where products enter commercial channels without the traceability, sanitary controls and operating permits required by Colombian regulations.

The operation also forms part of a broader pattern of enforcement against illicit or non-compliant meat activity in Antioquia. In May, the Policía Nacional reported the seizure of approximately 9,000 kilograms of meat products and the capture of one person in Donmatías, where authorities were investigating alleged violations involving food products and illegal animal slaughter. That case was separate from the Medellín investigation.

As of August, no additional publicly reported development that materially changes the July 23 account could be independently verified in the sources reviewed for this article. The four July detainees are still being placed at the disposal of the Fiscalía while the investigation proceeds.

For consumers, the operation underscores the importance of traceability and sanitary controls in the meat supply chain. For authorities, the investigation will need to establish the full scope of the alleged operation, including how the meat was processed, stored and distributed and whether additional individuals or businesses were involved.

Headline photo: Some of the meat seized by the Medellin authorities. (Photo provided by Medellín’s mayor’s office)

The registration, issued under INVIMA Registration No. 2026RD-0009793, authorizes the importation and sale of the assay in Colombia.

Alongside the approval, IntelliGenome named Velez Lab S.A.S. as its exclusive distribution partner in Colombia under a long-term commercial agreement to expand access to the test across the country.

“We believe CRISPR-TB’s blood-based approach has the potential to expand access to tuberculosis testing, particularly for patients who are difficult to diagnose using conventional methods.” — Kurt Wehrle, vice president of partnerships and strategic alliances, IntelliGenome

The CRISPR-TB Blood Test is a blood-based molecular diagnostic designed to detect cell-free DNA from the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in patients with suspected tuberculosis. It uses CRISPR technology to support detection from blood samples through both laboratory-based and point-of-care testing, which the company says can serve centralized and decentralized healthcare settings.

Colombia is among the higher-priority tuberculosis markets in Latin America, with continuing demand for diagnostic approaches that complement existing testing strategies and support earlier diagnosis.

“Tuberculosis remains a significant public health challenge in Colombia, and innovative diagnostic approaches are needed to support earlier detection,” said Kurt Wehrle, vice president of partnerships and strategic alliances at IntelliGenome. “We believe CRISPR-TB’s blood-based approach has the potential to expand access to tuberculosis testing, particularly for patients who are difficult to diagnose using conventional methods.”

Velez Lab S.A.S. is a leading Colombian provider of laboratory technologies, medical devices, and in vitro diagnostic solutions serving clinical laboratories, hospitals, healthcare institutions, and research organizations throughout Colombia.

“We are excited to partner with IntelliGenome to bring the CRISPR-TB Blood Test to Colombia,” said Álvaro Vélez, chief executive officer of Velez Lab. “We believe this innovative technology has the potential to enhance tuberculosis detection and provide clinicians with an important new diagnostic option.”

The companies said they plan to work with healthcare institutions, researchers, and public health stakeholders to generate clinical evidence in pediatric tuberculosis, extrapulmonary tuberculosis, and other high-priority populations, with the aim of supporting future integration into tuberculosis screening, diagnosis, and patient management.

IntelliGenome is a molecular diagnostics company focused on CRISPR-based diagnostic technologies. Its CRISPR-TB platform is being evaluated through collaborations with clinical, academic, and public health partners, and the company is developing both laboratory-based and near-patient testing.

Velez Lab S.A.S. is a Colombian provider of laboratory technologies, medical devices, and in vitro diagnostic products serving clinical laboratories, hospitals, healthcare institutions, and research organizations. The company has operated for more than four decades.

The therapy is used to treat various cancers, including colorectal and lung cancer.

The shipment to Colombia was dispatched approximately two months after receiving the regulatory authorization. Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a factor involved in blood vessel formation. The therapy is used in the treatment of various cancers, including metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) and metastatic or recurrent non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (nsNSCLC). Industry estimates indicate that global sales for bevacizumab injection reached $8.5 billion USD in 2023.

The arrival of the initial shipment in Colombia marks the execution of the companies’ commercial strategy for the region. The Colombian cancer burden is characterized by patterns aligning with bevacizumab’s indications, with 11,163 colorectal cases and 7,196 lung cases reported out of 117,620 new cancer cases in 2022, according to IARC GLOBOCAN 2022.

Manufacturing and Global Strategy

BioDlink’s manufacturing facilities, spanning 50,000 square meters, have undergone five audits by an EU Qualified Person (QP) for antibody drugs and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) over the past four years without any critical defects being reported. The company states that its quality system has supported over 100 clinical projects, providing development, clinical filings, and manufacturing services in global markets including Europe and the US.

The partnership operates under an international commercialization agreement signed in early 2022, establishing a framework where BioDlink focuses on manufacturing and supply chain management while Kexing BioPharm leverages its distribution network for market access in emerging regions. Kexing BioPharm, which holds the global license for the bevacizumab injection in emerging markets, has achieved Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification for the product in China, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Thailand. In collaboration with BioDlink, Kexing BioPharm has initiated regulatory filings in 35 countries. GMP certification in Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina covers South America’s three most populous countries.

BioDlink reports that its international focus remains on emerging markets, including South America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Above photo courtesy Kexing Biopharm

Cities like Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín lead the ranking of preferred destinations for those seeking high-quality medical and aesthetic services at competitive prices. Based on figures compiled by Cali’s city mayor’s office, between January and May 2024, Bogotá had received 3,951 medical tourists, followed by Cali with 3,331, and Medellín with 2,170. Other cities such as Barranquilla (553) and Cartagena (336) are also part of this growing phenomenon.

During the 44th Vitrina Turística de Anato Valle del Cauca (the region whose capital is Cali) announced a strategic plan to position itself as Colombia’s hub for medical tourism by 2027. The goal: attract 20% of all international patients coming to Colombia for medical treatment, a feasible target given current trends. Of the 3,331 medical tourists that Cali welcomed in the aforementioned period, 2,730 of whom were foreigners and 601 Colombian nationals living abroad. The majority of these visitors came from the United States, followed by the Netherlands, Panama, Ecuador, and Canada.

Cali boasts 3,912 registered healthcare providers (according to the REPS — Special Registry of Health Service Providers), ensuring a robust infrastructure to meet international demand. This strong institutional capacity has positioned Cali as a national and global leader in medical tourism.

Most international patients in Medellín come from the United States, Caribbean countries, Panama, the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada.

Meanwhile, Medellín broke records in 2024, serving 23,323 international patients (an average of 64 people per day), according to the Medellín Health City Cluster report by the Medellín Chamber of Commerce for Antioquia. This reflects a steady 14% annual growth since 2010. The city offers services in specialties such as ophthalmology, plastic surgery, cardiology, orthopedics, and gastroenterology, with total medical service revenues reaching $64.5 billion COP last year. The broader economic impact of medical tourism in Medellín, including lodging, transportation, and other spending, was around $45.5 billion COP.

“As a plastic surgeon, it is very gratifying to receive patients from abroad who come to experience Colombia and enjoy the benefits of our healthcare system. Every year, we successfully perform facial and body surgeries on patients who wish to improve some aesthetic aspects. The main challenge we face is the length of stay in Colombia. When it is less than 15 days, it makes follow-up body surgeries difficult. To this end, we have optimized the logistics of performing surgeries and the follow-up period so that we can guarantee maximum safety for our patients during the process,” said Dr. Tomás Feria Romero, a plastic surgeon based in Medellín, who is bilingual and equipped to perform complex aesthetic and reconstructive procedures.

Dr. Tomás Feria Romero, a plastic surgeon based in Medellín. (Photo credit: Dr. Tomás Feria)

“Surgery planning often begins six months or more in advance, through video call consultations, where we advise our patients on every detail to ensure an optimal experience. It is interesting to see how patients increasingly seek us out, not only for the benefit of the currency exchange but for the results we obtain and the Latin perspective of our results,” he explained.

Colombia’s position is further validated by global data. According to the 2024 report by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), Colombia ranks as the 13th country with the most plastic surgeons worldwide. Remarkably, 30% of procedures performed in Colombia are for foreign patients, the third-highest percentage globally, surpassed only by Tunisia and the UAE. The country ranks 10th globally in breast surgeries (85,920 procedures, representing 2.2% of the global total) and 9th in body & extremities aesthetic surgeries.

This momentum also makes Colombia an ideal destination for foreign investment in the healthcare sector. According to Newsweek’s World’s Best Hospitals 2025, Fundación Valle del Lili in Cali ranks 162nd globally, and Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá ranks 244th. A total of 60 Colombian hospitals were included in the study. Additionally, Colombia stood out in the Latam Business Conference 2024 ranking of Best Hospitals in Latin America, which featured 11 Colombian institutions, including Fundación Santa Fe with a score of 94.4, making it the second-best hospital in Latin America among 36 evaluated institutions.

Multinational insurer SURA chose Rionegro, in the suburbs of Medellín, for Vaxthera, its groundbreaking new vaccine production facility, led by the renowned researcher, and University of Wisconsin Molecular Virologist Dr. Jorge Osorio.

Photo credit: Loren Moss.

Colombia’s regulatory strength further supports this growth. Its national regulatory agency, INVIMA, is recognized by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) as a Level IV authority. Additionally, INVIMA’s Physicochemical Laboratory for Pharmaceuticals and Other Technologies is on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list of prequalified laboratories. The lab is certified for meeting Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) standards for analyzing medicines, cosmetics, dietary supplements, biologics, herbal products, and household hygiene products.

Colombia’s rise in medical tourism is a growing phenomenon that can be attributed to its advanced technology, world-class medical professionals, and lower costs compared to other countries, all without compromising international quality standards.

Multinational insurer SURA chose Rionegro, in the suburbs of Medellín, for its groundbreaking new vaccine production facility, led by the renowned researcher, and University of Wisconsin Molecular Virologist Dr. Jorge Osorio.

Headline photo: A patient preparing for an MRI procedure, courtesy Fundación San Vicente, Rionegro, Antioquia, Colombia

]]> https://www.financecolombia.com/colombian-government-steps-up-enforcement-of-ban-on-animal-testing-for-cosmetics/ Thu, 10 Oct 2024 21:19:10 +0000 https://www.financecolombia.com/?p=31162 The Colombian government is rolling out coordinated campaigns to raise awareness of Law 2047 of 2020, passed during the previous administration, which prohibits the testing, importation, exportation, manufacturing, and commercialization of cosmetic products or ingredients that have been tested on animals. The initiative is being led by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Tourism (MinCIT) and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MinTIC), with support from private sector companies.

The ministries are organizing working groups aimed at identifying effective methods to disseminate information about the law, which went into effect in 2020. These efforts will include collaboration with private enterprises to ensure broader understanding and compliance with the legislation.

Focus on Law Compliance and Alternatives

The primary goal of these campaigns is to make both the public and private sectors more aware of the legal requirements regarding animal testing in the cosmetics industry. To date, MinCIT and MinTIC have begun distributing this information through various media channels.

In parallel, the government is developing incentives to encourage the adoption of alternative testing models. The Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation has announced funding for research into alternatives, with scholarships available annually over the next 15 years.

Exceptions to the Ban

The law outlines two exceptions where animal testing may still be permitted. These include cases where an ingredient must undergo safety testing due to health or environmental risks and no alternative methods are available, and when animal testing has been conducted for purposes unrelated to cosmetic use.

Penalties for Non-Compliance

Companies or individuals found violating the law will face penalties imposed by the National Institute for Food and Drug Surveillance (Invima). Fines range from 133 to 50,000 times the Colombian minimum monthly wage.

The government’s efforts are aimed at fostering innovation in the cosmetics industry, encouraging businesses to move away from conventional testing methods, while offering support to those that comply with the new regulations.

Rabbit image by 🌼Christel🌼 from Pixabay

Tarkus says it is looking for a local partner to enter the US market to distribute its high quality products at attractive market prices.

Currently, the company has cannabis-derived raw materials, standardized mixtures and magistral formulas. By obtaining the certification, the laboratory is authorized to produce finished phyto-therapeutic products (ingestible products for medicinal purposes from natural origin).

“To achieve this important step, we have the required investment and a team of experts in the pharmaceutical industry. Additionally, we will place our products in pharmacies and department stores, facilitating access to thousands of people with chronic pathologies, so that they can enjoy the benefits offered by cannabis-based products,” said Alejandro Venegas, CEO of Tarkus.

Although the export of raw material does not require INVIMA certification, it is a requirement for the commercialization of the final labeled product that reaches consumers.

Photo: LinkedIn

Flora Growth (NASDAQ: FLGC) is one of the companies at the vanguard of formulating new products, but the company has also been financially innovative, listing on NASDAQ in the US rather than following most other sector companies with operations based in Colombia that list on Canada’s TSX.

With legal headquarters in Fort Lauderdale and almost 500 acres for cannabis cultivation in Colombia, Flora Growth’s business model spans consumer goods and medical formulations. Finance Colombia’s Executive Editor Loren Moss caught up with Flora Growth CEO Luis Merchan to discuss some recent developments with the company, and the significance of the decision by Colombia’s health ministry to Flora Growth, and to the sector more broadly.

Finance Colombia: One of the things I wanted to start with is that I noticed that you signed a distribution agreement for some of your products, is that correct?

Luis Merchan: That is correct. There are several of them that have been signed over the last couple of months. My team continues to expand not only on the wholesale side of our operations but also on the CPG side of the operation in terms of distribution and revenues.

“The change by the Secretary of Health, by the Ministry of Health, puts Colombia at the vanguard in terms of regulatory and legal framework for medicinal cannabis in the world. “

Finance Colombia: Can you tell me a little bit about the distribution deals? I think I saw that some of your products are going to go into Mexico and some other markets.

Luis Merchan: Yes, as you know Loren, Mexico is a very active cannabis market. There’s a new law that is being evaluated as of today that would allow several categories of products with less than one percent THC to be sold as normal, non-regulated CPG products, which would be an incredible step towards the distribution of wellness products in the country. Our agreement was for distribution initially of our floral beauty products. Those products are actually being sold already in major retailers in Mexico like Walmart.com and Coppel, which is a massive store chain with over 300 distribution points across the entire country, so clearly we continue to make inroads, not only from a distribution and sales standpoint but also from the regulatory standpoint.

Finance Colombia: I saw that the stock took a nice bump when that news was announced. Now, here in Colombia, we recently published an article and we see where the Ministry of Health, they issued a…in the US, we call it something like a pharmacopeia, but they issued updated guidelines for what medicines and treatments are covered by the EPS, by Colombia’s publicly supported health insurance providers or healthcare providers that are known here locally as EPS (Entidad proveedor de salúd, or Healthcare provider entity), and it’s interesting because one of the things that caught our attention was that they added cannabis, both CBD and also THC products to their list of medicines that insurance companies not only can cover but actually must cover. So I wanted to get your input on how impactful that is and what that means for the industry, specifically for patients, but then also specifically for Flora Growth.

Luis Merchan: Yes, Loren. It’s a significant change. I think there’s three major topics to cover here. First, the change by the Secretary of Health, by the Ministry of Health, puts Colombia at the vanguard in terms of regulatory and legal framework for medicinal cannabis in the world. This move is very meaningful; it allows patients that are suffering from major ailments such as anxiety, depression, pain, insomnia, all these ailments, they have access now to cannabis molecules. The doctors also now have the ability to prescribe such cannabis formulations, which is a very meaningful step, and also of course puts Colombia in a very strong position in terms of how to approach the medicinal regulatory environment.

For the patients, it’s significant, and obviously patients today have for long talked about the empirical benefits of cannabis and they secure most of their cannabis formulations from the black market today, and they do it because they have to. And of course what happens with those types of formulations is that they do not have the quality standards that medical formulations should have, so they inadvertently are putting themselves at risk. Now they are not going to have to do that, they can go to their doctor, they can ask for the formulation and the doctor can give them a prescription, and so it makes it safer for patients to have access to medicinal cannabis.

And for companies such as mine, it’s a major step towards not only broadly distributing products and formulations that are already in existence, but also a significant economic revenue that can be guaranteed, almost guaranteed in an environment like Colombia where you can actually bill public entities for the formulations that are being given to patients.

Finance Colombia: I know that there are all kinds of different treatment options. There are traditional hospitals, there are doctors that are private practitioners, there are clinics that are also known as IPS down here, which are obviously different than the EPS, which are more of like what we would call a PPO back in the States. But then I see that there have also been, on a limited basis, treatment clinics that have opened up, kind of for palliative care and for treating other different things. Now, one of the interesting things about Flora, about your company, is that you guys have a really interesting distribution model because you have cannabis derived products, you have things like cosmetics, you have health foods, you have hemp textiles. One of the things I don’t remember us talking about is pharmaceutical products or medicines. How are you involved in this space when it comes to healthcare or prescription medication?

Luis Merchan: Actually, our laboratory has the ability to manufacture a wide array of products including phytotherapeutics, dietary supplements and capsules. We today manufacture skincare solutions for almost a thousand doctors that develop custom formulations for their patients and distribute them on a one-to-one prescription basis, so for us it’s a plug-and-play move. We are going to now be able to manufacture our cannabis formulations, what in Colombia’s called magistral custom formulas, and be able to plug in to that network of doctors that is already in existence. So, that would be the easier shorter route to gain access, to give access to patients and doctors to our products and formulations.

Luis Merchan, the CEO of Flora Growth.

But as you mentioned, I think the bigger play here is to plug into the broader EPS network; educate doctors on the benefits of each one of the formulators that we have available so then they are comfortable prescribing patients when they’re coming, to treat a number of ailments. So, this is going to be a campaign that is going to take some time, but our intent is to educate the medical community in Colombia with the many partnerships that we have, and we actually have developed this very robust cannabis education programs for doctors and ensure that then they in turn start prescribing these safe formulations for the treatment of the many elements that patients are looking for today.

Finance Colombia: Like you mentioned, you have your laboratory. You guys have your INVIMA registration…INVIMA, for those who don’t know, is kind of like the Colombian version of the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration back in the States. You mentioned the magistral, the custom formulas. Now, I noticed that you have on your website, which is floralgrowth.com, where it talks about the laboratory, there’s a place for people that are interested in becoming Flora Lab distributors. What kind of companies are the good candidates for distribution? Pharmacies? CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods)? Are there maybe other companies that use the ingredients? How does your distribution model work in that respect?

Luis Merchan: When it comes to Flora Lab, we offer a broad array of products. There are branded products, over 65 of them that are INVIMA registered that we distribute worldwide, and any company that is a major distributor, that has access to points of sales in Latin America, in Central America, or all over the world can reach out to us and can become a distributor for those products. But there are other categories of products that are manufactured and sold at Flora. One of those is, of course, a prescription medication. We have a number of molecules that we plug into pharmacies and drug stores. We have, as I mentioned, phytotherapeutics, which is a very specialized area of therapy and treatment, and doctors and pharmaceutical distributors can reach out to us to plug into those categories of products. And then, lastly, we also have wholesale ingredients that we sell, and distributors that are interested in the wholesale side of distribution can also reach out to us and can become a part of the Flora distribution network.

“In North America we’re selling some of our products in 48 out of the 50 states, in Mexico, in Costa Rica. We are already selling some products into Canada. When you’re in Europe our footprint expands into Portugal, Malta, England…”

Finance Colombia: What markets, what countries have you guys expanded to so far? Where do you have a presence? I know you have different brands in different locations, but obviously you’re here in Colombia. But what other countries, obviously I think Mexico, I think Spain, but let me understand now what countries have Flora Growth products across your CPG and the pharmaceutical brands. Where can your products be found?

Luis Merchan: The list is exceptional, continues to grow, Loren, from a CPG perspective. We’re in the majority of Latin America as of today and at least the markets that are the most meaningful. I think the one market that is not there…It’s probably easier to tell you what market that we haven’t penetrated yet but we’re looking to, in South America is Brazil, because of the strict rules that they have in terms of distribution, but for the rest, in North America we’re selling some of our products in 48 out of the 50 states, in Mexico, in Costa Rica. We are already selling some products into Canada. When you’re in Europe our footprint expands into Portugal, Malta, England. We have now activated these distribution agreements in several countries across the globe, like Israel, like South Africa, Germany and Australia. Those contracts will activate this year so that the flag has been planted but the revenue generation will not start until 2022, and the good news here is that our team is a global team in terms of distribution, sales and regulatory, so we’ll continue to evaluate which opportunities are opening up in terms of the regulatory framework and when those do, then we are ready to very quickly enter the market, and that’s what happened for example in Mexico, and that’s what will probably continue to happen in other countries around the world, so look forward to more countries being added to this list.

Finance Colombia: That’s great to hear. Obviously, we want you to keep us posted as we continue to cover, not just obviously the stock from a financial perspective, but also your growth as a company and your product line. It’s really good to see Colombian companies becoming true multinationals and becoming companies that are expanding into markets, not just here in Latin America, but in North America and in Europe and beyond, so it’s really impressive what you’ve been able to do in such a short time.

Such legislation takes a further step, building on last year’s Decree 811 creating a licensing scheme and legalizing export of commercial marijuana, after allowing its use for scientific and medical purposes in 2016 with Law 1787.

Signed February 20, the new law enables domestic production and marketing of non-psychoactive cannabis products, and further defines import and export rules.

“This resolution allows, defines and establishes all the mechanisms and procedures for the industrial use of the cannabis plant in sectors such as food, beverages, alcoholic beverages and dietary supplements, defining, of course, that these uses have to do with the non-psychoactive component,” said Colombian President Ivan Duque.

“There has already been progress in credits for small and medium-sized producers. These credits continue to be developed through the Agrarian Bank, where cannabis producers are also provided with all the issues of foreign exchange management, monetization and marketing from Colombia,” The president continued.

Colombian Health Minister Fernando Ruiz Gómez added that the regulation is important for the safe development of the legal cannabis industry, including oversight by Colombia’s food and drug regulatory agency INVIMA (Instituto Nacionál de Vigilancia de Medicamentos y Alimentos).

“The different sanitary provisions that must take place by INVIMA, with good manufacturing practices, and all labeling and packaging requirements, are fundamental for all the progress of the industry,” said Dr. Gómez.

“This opens the possibility, with the components of the cannabis plant and its non-psychoactive derivatives, of producing dietary supplements complementing the existing dietary supplements in Colombia, in order to advance in the entire process of supporting nutrition and support to people who require dietary supplements”.

Cannabis Industry Pleased

Bill Petron, CEO of PharmaCielo (TSXV: PCLO) (OTCQX: PCLOF), a Colombian cannabis producer with Toronto headquarters commented on the news, saying in a statement: “The passing of Regulation 227 is a historic development for the Colombian cannabis industry, opening the large and growing global dried flower market as well as multiple CBD-based opportunities, to Colombian producers. The Colombian government has consistently demonstrated its desire to build this industry into a global leader, and in our opinion the announcement makes Colombia the most export-friendly and competitive jurisdiction in the world.

Dried flower accounts for up to 50% market share in most mature cannabis markets globally and represents a massive opportunity both for the Colombian industry, and PharmaCielo. With scalable cultivation and processing capacity in place, a structural cost advantage, and the sophistication to ensure consistently high-quality products, PharmaCielo is positioned to capture market share against current international exports from markets like Canada.

The government’s revised approach to the quota system will both ensure speed to market, as well as greater efficiency throughout the sales process. We expect 2022 to be a very exciting year of growth for PharmaCielo, as we launch and expand dried flower exports, bringing global patients access to high quality, affordable medical cannabis products.”

Above photo: Wilson Ruiz Orejuela, Minister of Justice and Law, and Juan Gonzalo Botero, Deputy Minister of Agricultural Affairs of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development join President Ivan Duque at the podium and health minister Dr. Fernando Ruíz Gómez announcing the legislation.

Humanos 3D Foundation partners with local institutions like hospital operator San Vicente Fundacion, the University of Antioquia, and Medellín’s tech accelerator, Ruta-N. Just as importantly, the work is made possible financially and logistically by the Viva Air Foundation, Australian Embassy, and the Toucan Spanish School, among others. (If you would like to support the foundation or get involved, click here)

Recently, Viva Air flew the Humanos 3D Foundation team to Colombia’s Caribbean region to fit 25 youth with new, custom themed prosthetics in Valledupar, but they hope to fabricate and donate at least 100 this year. Finance Colombia’s executive editor Loren Moss paid a visit to The Humanos 3D Foundation’s Medellín headquarters to learn more about this innovative nonprofit from founder Adam Armfield (above).

Finance Colombia: So tell us how you first ended up in Medellin.

Adam Armfield: So I’m Australian and I worked in the corporate health industry for many years, in both London and Sydney. I arrived in Colombia about seven years ago. I wanted a break from the corporate world, and so I decided to come to Medellin to take six months off to see what I could do. I didn’t really have any plans so I put the backpack on the back and came over just to explore the city and learn some Spanish, basically, and after six months I decided to stay.

Not long after that, I had to think about a business idea, what I wanted to do. I became very interested in 3D printing, and so I went to New York for a five day conference where I found people who were starting this project of building hands. That’s a great way to learn about 3D printing while I set up the business, and so I came back to Medellin with a 3D printer and I just started making these hands; not for anyone, but just to see if I could do it.

When I made one or two of these, I opened the business up and about six months later, someone from a local science club heard that I had a 3D business and I’d been making these hands, and they had a student within the science club, who went to work with me to learn about 3D printing, but also to deliver one of these hands to a young guy, and so we delivered the hand. From that point on we started to get more people…but I was running the business at the time.

Finance Colombia: What was the business?

Adam Armfield: So the business was just a 3D printing shop. 3D printing services and buying and selling, the consumables and the printers. The business, well it was tough for me, it didn’t do well and it wasn’t going that well, and I had plenty of capacity on the 3D printers, and so we had the students and we also were getting calls on, “I need a new arm.” Well, why don’t we do this on a Thursday night or Saturday mornings? We can just do a part-time sort of social project within the business, and we had spare capacity, and so we started like that.

Then I received a call from someone who heard about our work from England and they said, “well, I want to come and work with you, and I want to volunteer.” (I asked) “I want to know how many days you want to come?” She said “I want to do six months with you.” And I was like I’m not sure if I’m going to be here in six months!”

She came over and said “Look, we want to raise some money for this, you can pay for the materials, you can pay for the space, but as a business you can’t accept donations.” So we actually decided:  There’s a lot more interest and energy around this project. Let’s set it up as its own Not-for-profit.” So back in 2017 we established as an official NGO within Medellin, and now 90% of my work is in the foundation. I still have the business, but it’s online mainly, doing a few signs here and there. So that’s pretty much how we started.. Once you got a little bit of publicity, more people…I mean, we’ve got great projects, we probably have more 3D printers here than many of the universities have in their entire engineering departments, and we’ve got 3D scanners so we opened the doors up to them and it’s just grown. Now we’re doing mobile clinics. This year we’re looking to deliver 120 devices. Last year we did about 60, so yes, it’s growing.

Finance Colombia: Here in Colombia, there are congenital birth defects but there are a lot of people that are victims of the conflict and, you know we have a land mine problem. Why don’t you talk a little bit about the people that you’re helping and how that came to be? The gap that you’re filling here in Colombia?

Adam Armfield: Sure. I guess as many people know, Colombia still has a huge problem with conflict and it has been a historical problem. Initially we were thinking about this project and thinking that would be something which we could tap into and we could help a lot of these people. We have helped several people who’ve been victims of conflict and mines, whether it’s been through standing on landmines. I would say most, a majority of people who stand on the landmine in general lose their legs. We have dealt with cases where people have been armed or disarming mines, so we try to run as a nonpolitical organization, not religious, so we offer help to anyone who needs it and we don’t go too much into their background.

We’ve dealt with soldiers and we’ve dealt with ex combatants. When we did have one soldier who was trying to disarm a mine and he lost both his hands and his sight when it went off in his face, this presents a new challenge for us, because how do you use a prosthetic? You don’t know what you’re picking up. So, we actually had one of the international students come over and worked with the local teams and we made a device which had a motion sensor in it, and then a motion sensor, a distance sensor, like what you’ve got in the back of your car, and so this guy would get a ‘beep beep beep to find what he’s looking for and then double his arm. The family called us about three hours after the delivery and said, please take it off him because he’s walking around the house beeping us crazy!”

And so we went to version two, where we put a vibrating motor in there, so we still had to do the sensor, but instead of beeping, it just vibrates faster when it gets close to the item. That makes sense. So, yes, that was one of the mine victims, victims of conflict, more of the victims of conflict to people who’ve had  their limbs chopped off, so they’ve literally been there when their towns have been attacked and they’ll take off the both or one arm off of a machete and in many cases they’d also cut their throat or hit him in the back of her head to make sure the job’s done. We’ve received a few of those, not a huge amount, but two or three of those cases.

They’ve usually waited 15 or 20 years to receive the help from the government. They tell stories about discrimination when they go into a hospital, they’ll be put in the system and then someone in the administration won’t let them continue because they will say “they’re the rats” or “they don’t deserve help from the rest of us,” etcetera, etcetera, and so they’ll get thrown out of the health system and never get an arm. So we can step in and help people in those lines as well.

Finance Colombia: Obviously there’s direct help that you’re offering to victims of violence or conflict, but another thing that you’re doing that is very interesting is you’re contributing to the open-source community. Tell us about that, because a lot of the design that you’re making, you are also sharing with the world.

Adam Armfield: Sure, everything we do here is open source. Any of the designers, anyone, any of the volunteers who come from the university, we make it very clear that we’re going to copy, share, mutate, improve, do whatever we want to do to the designs, and a lot of designs that we actually work with have come from other communities around the world who are working with similar projects. So not only do we generate our own new designs, but we also hack some of the designs that exist, and then we rerelease those designs to the world. So open source basically means there’s no license on it, they’re completely sharable, and we feel this has a really big impact in what we’re doing.

Anyone can use our designs, and yes, we are using them here in Colombia, but our designs are now being used all over the world, from the United States to England, to Africa. With this type of technology, we’re changing our designs every couple of weeks. Every few months we get some good designs that we use, but we’re always personalizing and changing, and so for a bureaucracy like Colombia, where you have INVIMA (health & medical device and product regulatory agency), but in a design type of environment, you’d need to submit one design and wait two years to get approval, and then you want to change a finger when it is designed, and you’ve got another two years to wait

It’s a long process. It takes up to two years. There’s another company here in Medellin, which has gone down that path using 3D printing too, but they don’t donate the design, they sell them for up to $5,000 for a robotic arm, but we’re friends with them and we’ve worked together, we’ve taught them about the process and for us, it’s just not worth it, there’s a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of things which inhibit the innovation and the creativity of the team, and so what we prefer to do is rather than go down the sales route, we keep it all open source, and we donate them all as experimental devices. This project hasn’t faced any problems over the last three or four years, they have similar projects in the United States and England, have similar regulatory structures, but as long as we’re not selling them and commercializing them, and we include a disclaimer that these are experimental devices, we’re usually pretty good.

Finance Colombia: You know, I know a company in the States, Sprintray, that is now 3D printing teeth, dentures, or that kind of thing, so I would imagine that you guys here, have having a central office in metro Medellin, but I imagine that long-term, there’s a benefit because the 3D printing technology…Colombia has decent infrastructure where you can get out to the remote areas pretty easily and get into the city if you need to, but I imagine that if I look at other places in the world or areas of conflict or areas where they don’t have the infrastructure that we have here, by using 3D printing technology, you can remotely take this, probably either transport it via air or stick it all in the back of a van and go somewhere and actually do things right there.

Adam Armfield: You sure can, and this has already been done. We’re part of a global network called Enable, a kind of non-centralized global distribution of 3D printers. It could be someone who’s just doing a college project, it could be someone like us, who set up their own not-for-profit, but basically, it’s a support network where we provide designs, and we share knowledge. One of the groups, actually raised money to go to Africa, took a 3D printer and they found an area of high need, and then they went over and taught the local community, with the 3D printer, how to use this technology. They made some (prosthetics) while they’re there. These (printers) weigh about ten to fifteen kilos, and then when they leave Africa, then installed the knowledge remains there.

Finance Colombia: Another thing is that you have an active internship program, and that’s another benefit because you have students here in Colombia, students here in Medellin that are studying things like bioengineering, medical engineering, and those types of fields. I see that you have a lot of students and former students that are getting hands on experience, and then you’ve also mentioned that you’ve had interns come internationally. So why don’t you talk about not just the international ones and the opportunity that they’ve been able to gain, but let’s talk about the local students and, forgive the pun, the hands-on experience they gain.

Adam Armfield: As you mentioned previously, we had a lot of international students just from word of mouth and then they’d come over and help us, anywhere from two weeks to six months. We always had Colombian volunteers as well, but it was always maybe a 50-50 mix. When the pandemic arrived, we lost pretty much all the international students and we had to change our funding methods. We started to expand our programs within the universities, and so now, pretty much everybody who works with us are Colombian. We work with a range of universities here and we offer them internships and volunteer placements, so the internships are six months. The interns are usually in their final semester or final year of bioengineering.

We put them through paces. They have to pass a test because we’re getting a lot of applicants now, and so we will actually (test) them: Do they know basic programming? Have they got  3D printing or 3D design skills? So these guys arrive, they’ve got good skills which contribute to our organization. They’ve learned, but now they can actually put it into practice, so the idea is not only will they work on the current designs and help with distributing and making the hands and the arms to the people who need them now from our list, but we’ll organize one specific project for them each to have while they’re here.

For example, Sara has been doing the development of the fingers and the splints, these new guys here will be working on new versions of robotic arms as well, as some other projects, just quickly (to Sara), tell me about the projects that you’ll be developing this year.

Intern Sara Patiño adjusts a robotically enhanced Batman-themed prosthetic arm

Sara Patiño: We are going to develop a transhumeral prosthesis and our intention is to integrate it specifically to the person who requires it. For example, if the person needs it to practice a sport, how can we help them so that they can practice sport with the prosthesis? For instance, we are going to work with a girl so that mobility can be facilitated with the prosthesis, or a person who is going to drive, we are going to work the same part of the prosthesis so that she can drive comfortably.

Adam Armfield: Thank you very much. So generally, the students will come in, we get hundreds of cases and we have to turn some of them down because they don’t fit into the standard designs, so they’re transfemoral above the elbow, or, they just have a badly mutilated hand, which doesn’t fit into the glove, so we’ve had to turn a lot of these cases away with one look. We only focused on the easy cases, we’re trying to get the low hanging fruit that can serve as many people as possible. But now, because we have this expanded program with the universities, when one of these guys come in, we can say, “look, here’s the caseload, choose some cases which we can help,” and so they’ll do the transfemoral, they’ll do a case here with a little girl who maybe has just a one finger or the robotics, so the idea is not only can we then generate new devices, which all become open source, and we publish those on our website that can be used around the world, but we then have a whole range of designs.

So we won’t have to deny as many people in the future because there’s only a certain number of amputations, of cases that you can have, and we’re also giving these guys an opportunity to apply the design skills, design thinking, and when they leave here, the idea is obviously if they do well here, we’re going to give them a good reference. They’re going to have some good work experience behind them, and they can go out and do this either professionally, in a commercial environment or working in some type of not-for-profit.

Finance Colombia: I would imagine that the costs add up, so how do you meet the funding challenges? There are some people in Colombia that have the means to pay for things, but I imagine a lot of people, especially in rural areas don’t, so you end up I would imagine, donating a lot of the work, if not most or almost all of it. So tell me about the funding model.

Adam Armfield: So, the costs do add up as you mentioned, because not only do we have to pay the normal cost of rent, we do have three employees, the rest are volunteers. We have probably about 15 volunteers, but we have the cost of materials, the cost of the 3D printers, the cost of maintenance, but one of the other costs, which was becoming a little bit unmanageable for us for a while, was the cost of people having to visit us. A lot of these people as you mentioned, live in rural areas. They live on the other side of Colombia. We have people who will travel 15 hours to see us. They would hop on a bus, or two buses traveling from all parts of Colombia to get here, whether from the south, the east, anywhere, for them to come across, they’re paying at least a hundred thousand pesos one way at least, and then they’re having to pay for a night of accommodation here just the come and take the measurements, and they’ve got to do it again in a month’s time to come and pick the prosthetic up.

Now, if that person is a child, you can double that cost because there is a parent that has to come, so now you’re looking at close to 1.5 to double just on their travel expenses. That’s not possible for most families in Colombia. And so all these costs that come up, we were paying for them. 90% or 95% of our money was through the volunteers that came, international volunteers, they would come over and make their own donation, or they’d set up crowdfunding campaigns. Every year we would run two, maybe three crowdfunding campaigns with a new set of volunteers, because if you try to crowd fund as an organization, you’re lucky if you can do that once a year, people don’t do that. But if you get fresh volunteers, fresh networks in, and people who bring their own network of people, and then they donate…so that’s how we were running, but as we started to get more cases in, we had more and more costs coming up that still wasn’t viable.

So that’s when we met with Viva Air and (Executive Chairman) Declan asked “how can we help more people?” Those are the kind of thoughts that he had, and I said, “look, mobile clinics would help us reduce costs, we could go out to them. We could do 20 people in a space of a couple of days, rather than paying 20 people, one or two journeys to come and visit us, you know what I mean?” So we can do these for a tenth of the cost of by going out there.

So to reduce these costs, instead of inviting 20 people a year to come visit us, we can go and see a town…We’ve developed training materials. We had a professional video crew who volunteered their time to develop YouTube videos, and professional documentation that we’ve done, and so we do some online training with, local, medical providers, so we’ll contact the local department and the secretary of health within regions that we think are high conflict or need help now; or they will contact us after they’ve heard about it. We’ll ask them to dedicate one or two members of staff to this project, and it doesn’t have to be a full-time, it could be a couple hours a week, but someone that we can liaise with on the ground. We train them up, how to take the measurements, they send all the official documents, all the measurements and the patient details to us. he team of interns and volunteers will then spend the next couple of weeks making (the devices).

We’re trying to deliver 10 clinics this year. We got thrown down a little bit with the (COVID) travel restrictions, but we’re on track, so the idea is to deliver 10 clinics with 120 arms or devices this year. In the end, the sponsor is the one who invested in us to do it all these mobile clinics.

Finance Colombia: Very impressive. So we touched briefly on Declan Ryan and the Viva Air foundation. So, Viva Air foundation is a major benefactor. So, so if you can touch a little bit on how that happened.

Adam Armfield: Sure. Viva Air has been a huge lifeline. This project was always running sort of month-to-month budget and these guys, when we lost our international volunteers, I thought we were done for! Because to 90% to 95% of our funding came through that. So one of our volunteers was English, it just so happened he was someone who the British embassy needed to take care of, and so I got to become good friends with one of the staff at the embassy. So that staff member helped us here and there throughout the first two years through, and then at the end of 2019 he approached me and said “hey, would you like some corporate sponsors?, I know someone within Viva Air, who could potentially help you,” and so they sent down the head of Viva Air Foundation, Monica Gil. Monica runs the foundation with some of the other ladies and so they came in and we had been applying for grants by this stage for a good year or two sending them away to whatever organization, everyone, and then long processes, you very rarely hear back.

Viva Air Foundation & Humanos 3D Team Up To Provide Custom Prosthetics To Valledupar Youth

But Viva Air came in and said, “how much do you need?” I said, this is what we need to finish the year. Three days later, they said “approved, we’ll have the money you can next week,” so they believe in what we are doing. We are in need of more sponsors still, we’ve recently got a grant from the Swiss government, we’re still in need of further funding to continue to grow and to meet our budgets going forward. So yes, Viva came in, they’ve helped us not only with the financing side of things, but Natalia (from the Viva Air Foundation) is now working with us to—as a volunteer—to design our financial projections, to make sure we’ve got everything in order as far as how much money we need, what what’s our current financial status.

So, you know, being in this organization, we take anyone as volunteers because everyone has something to offer. We’ve had, everyone from advanced electronics designers to ex corporates from Ireland to come in and tell us: “I’ve got no skills, what can I do for this?” Of course you can get painting, everyone’s got a skill they can offer, so not only can the organizations help us financially, but if they have people who want to help us with our systems or with our designs or lift things along those lines, we want to work with them as well.

Finance Colombia: Really cool story. Does the Australian embassy know about you? I think Erika Thompson is the new ambassador.

Adam Armfield: She’s great, she came to visit us. She took over from Sophie Davies. The Australian embassy heard about the work we were doing, and we applied for a direct access funding program back when Sophie was ambassador. So we’ve got about $10,000 or $20,000 from the embassy to help us, which was a great help. That actually helped us upgrade the installations to expand the amount of people we are helping.

I found we worked our guts off for like two or three years scraping and scraping, and then when there was enough momentum behind us, the embassy arrived within about a week or two, and Viva Air arrived, and so we’re going, “this is great!” We got the new ambassador, she said: “I’ve heard about your work. Can I come and visit?” And she goes, “look, we want to continue to support you,” so we just received a little bit more support from the Australian government this year as well.”

So Viva and the Australian government have pretty much brought us through to this point, and we did a crowdfunding campaign at the end of last year. We tried to do one in Colombia this year, but everyone’s tight for money. You know what I mean? To be in this type of situation where unemployment’s high, people are losing their jobs. It’s a little bit tougher to do the crowdfunding, so we’re really relying on the corporate sponsors and, and the government sponsors this year, and who knows what’s going to happen next year? Hopefully we’ll keep on growing in that direction.

You know, we’re doing a great thing here in Colombian society, not only for the people that we’re helping, but from the educational side of things, for offering opportunities to these students. It’s something that doesn’t exist in this area, and so I think if people want to get involved with us, I think that there’s a lot of businesses in Colombia, hopefully that can get involved. Obviously we accept anyone from any country, but if Colombians want to get involved, that would be great because I’m the only gringo here! Before there were more, but this is a Colombian team, and to invest in their own people through education, health, it’s something that would reflect really well within their company. We need more Colombian companies involved, but yes, as I said, we welcome multinationals as well.

Finance Colombia: One of the things that I like is that there are a lot of charities out there that are saying: “give us money” and they show you some picture of some starving kid or something like that, but you are not selling misery, but you are taking these people and giving them prosthetics and things that improve their quality of life, and the story is a positive story rather than a negative story.

Adam Armfield: It’s extremely positive. I mean, these devices, they really change the script of how someone feels about themselves. Yes, they have functionality that people can now pick up a bottle again, people can now use utensils again, or write again or paint again.  One of the stories is a guy who was donated of the (standard prosthetics) from the health system that only had three forks (instead of a hand) and these kids wouldn’t go near him because they saw him as a monster. When he got one of (ours), he came back a couple of weeks later, he was in tears, he said “because all my kids were hugging me again” because it’s like a normal working arm, you know?

So to have that effect on someone’s self-esteem, where his kids were hugging him again, he said “I can’t wait to go fishing again,” you know what I mean?

We have other kids who are arriving at school, they’ve been teased the whole time for not having an arm, not having a hand. Now they go back to school, and they’ve got a an Iron Man or Captain America hand or something like that, and all the kids are like, “wow, this is so cool!” and so the prosthetic or their disability becomes something cool and it really changes the script! We hope that the effect on their self-esteem is going to carry through into their education into their social life and eventually into their later work life. So we’re hoping this and obviously these are very long-term studies, we can’t provide data on that, but it’s obvious withy the smiles on these kids, on their faces, and we’re hoping that it has an impact.

Left to right: Esteban Rojas, Walter Gómez Ospina, Jhon Alexander Sossa Gallego, Melissa Echavarría Guarín, Sara Patiño, Tanya Corredor, Adam Armfield

On the other hand, for legitimate medicinal purposes, the government has taken a much more progressive stance. Firms may obtain licenses for cultivation, processing, use, and export of cannabis derivatives for medical and therapeutic applications. A leader and innovator in this field is the company Khiron Life Sciences (OTCQX, TSX.V: KHRNF, TSX: KHRN, Frankfurt: A2JMZC), operating in Colombia but with legal headquarters in Canada and trading on Canadian and Frankfurt stock exchanges.

Like several other companies in Colombia, Khiron cultivates and processes cannabis at its agricultural facilities in Ibagué, Tolima (above). But Khiron takes the unique approach of launching and operating a chain of integrative medical clinics under its Zerenia brand, providing a broad range of medical treatment services that go far beyond cannabis products.

To understand this unique approach, Finance Colombia’s Executive Editor Loren Moss sat down with Khiron Co-Founder and CEO Álvaro Torres to discuss go-to-market strategy, cannabis in Colombia, and the company’s unique Zerenia Integrated Care clinics.

Finance Colombia: We’ve covered Khiron for a few years now, so it’s good to finally talk to you. It’s been fascinating to look at the progress of the company starting out and getting licenses, and now you’re opening clinics, so I really want to understand more about the company. If I understand the structure, it’s incorporated in Canada with operations here in Colombia. So rather than try to describe it, why don’t you give me a brief overview?

Álvaro Torres: Thank you Loren. Well, yes, at Khiron, we are a B2C focused company, that means that my main obsession is to improve the quality of life of people through the use of medical cannabis. That means that we’re not a B2B obsessed company, we’re not here to sell the cheapest cannabis possible in the world, we are here to actually bring our products into patients’ hands and to bring medical cannabis to the forefront in Colombia and Latin America.

Everything that we do is based on how close we can get to that patient when cultivating in Colombia, of course, with the low cost capabilities that we have here, but we go all the way from the seed to the clinic.

Khiron Life Sciences CEO Álvaro Torres with Finance Colombia Executive Editor Loren Moss on a Webex call.

We have our own network of clinics. We have opened one in Medellin in December; we’re opening five more in the next three weeks and hopefully 15 more by the end of this year. I believe that we have to drive that education, show people that it really works, building the evidence, doing things really quality; well done with good quality products, a lot of education and be able to reach as many places as possible. We’re fully integrated from the seed to the patient. We cultivate in Ibagué (Capital of Tolima Department, Colombia), and then we train our doctors, and we receive patients in our clinics.

That’s what we’ve done in Colombia, I would say that we have been very successful so far, [but we are] still a long way from where I want us to go, of course. But we’re taking that model across Latin America in Peru, in Mexico, Brazil and we are looking at similar models in Europe, where we are set to start sales in Germany and soon to start sales in the United Kingdom. And, it’s all Zerenia branded products, Zerenia branded clinics and that’s how we plan to grow our business.

We have our own network of clinics. We have opened one in Medellin in December; we’re opening five more in the next three weeks and hopefully 15 more by the end of this year.

So, we started selling in Colombia March 19 of last year, remember that President Ivan Duque closed the entire country on March 20, sort of a bittersweet moment because we were excited about being the first company in Colombia to sell medical cannabis, but then the next day everything is shut down, and, you know, it’s been tough to run a clinic in pandemic. I don’t have to explain to you because you have been here, but we have been growing 50% month to month, since then. With medical cannabis prescriptions, we just reached our 10,000th prescription in Colombia and just to give you the idea of what that means, in January we did almost half of what we did, in [all of] 2020.

So, the growth is happening because the more we go out there and tell people these stories of real patients, the more we talk about the clinic, we have more of these stories which are real stories out there, we have (Colombian commentator) Pirry, (soccer player) Iván René Valenciano, the more evidence we can show to the doctors, the more patients in Colombia are saying: “Well, you know, maybe this is not so bad,” and—you know, you’ve been, I don’t know, how long have you known Colombia?

Finance Colombia: I’ve known Colombia since 2004.

Álvaro Torres: Okay, so, you’ve seen the very exciting times the last eight years, I’ve been living here all my life, except when I went to school and for a country like ours, you know, where marijuana and drugs have been such a terrible part of our past, to have faces are saying, “you know, what I’m gonna try this because I’m sick of opiates,” and the fact that we are leading that conversation because we’ve been focused solely on that from the beginning, that’s why we’re having all this growth.

Khiron expects its network of Zerenia integrative care clinics to reach 15 by the end of 2021.

I mean we saw a hundred-year-old patient—I’m not kidding!—A hundred years old with arthritis, on Saturday! A year ago I would have never even dreamed that a woman of a hundred years old would be going to a clinic to get cannabis for her muscles and her joints! Also, stories are catching on because people are starting to understand the benefits. I’m not shy to say that Khiron, since we started, we’ve been advocates of that from the beginning, and we’re in a very exciting market because, I don’t know if you know, on December first the Colombian government declared that medical cannabis was now going to be reversed, so in Colombia today as we speak any patient in Colombia that needs medical cannabis has it covered by the national system.

Finance Colombia: Okay, by the EPS (Colombian health plans) and all those systems, right?

Álvaro Torres: It’s called the MIPRES, which is a direct reimbursement from the government to the insurance companies, to the EPS because, when we started in December 1 of last year with that, the amount of people that now are able to access this medication, which if done responsibly, can provide your benefits. It’s great, so that’s what we have been doing  from the beginning, it’s always been our story and now we are let’s say, doubling down on the expansion of our clinics because we know how to treat patients, and we do it ethically because, of course, no doctor in our company is ever going to give a prescription to a patient that doesn’t need it but we do understand the management, we have benefits of medical cannabis with chronic pain and depression, epilepsy, and it’s been a very interesting ride right considering we are in the middle of a pandemic still now, so I can only imagine what we can do after these emergency sanitary restrictions end. But it’s very exciting Loren, for me and for everybody here in the company.

Finance Colombia: So, I don’t know a lot about cannabis, help me understand. Because you hear some people talk about CBD and then there’s the natural plant and then there’s I would imagine, other derivatives. You guys are focused on therapeutics, you have treatment centers now, and I think one unique thing about your business model is that like you said, you go from growing the product to also having the medical clinics as well. But help me understand what happens when the patient goes to the clinic, and what are your products? Are they these things that we hear about called CBD? Is it something that people smoke? is it an injection?

Álvaro Torres: Just to give you some background, in Colombia today the regulation allows medical cannabis and only in the form of extracts, ok? So, there is no flower market, legally at least.

I think the reason why the government did that, and we’re very open about it, I’m particularly very vocal about that, I think that was smart on behalf of the government to try to separate this illegal business of marijuana from the medical cannabis, even though it’s the same plant. We talk about cannabis today in Colombia there’s a clear distinction from marijuana, associated with illegal shipments, rock lords and medical cannabis which is more of a pharmaceutical type of quality.

Also now, of course, the cannabis plant has more than 150 molecules, the most well-known are CBD and THC. For the people who are not initiated in this industry I would say that you can use CBD for neurological issues such as epilepsy and abnormal movements just to give you examples.  And THC would be mostly focused on chronic pain. This is 101 level, of course, you know, anybody who’s listening and knows more about cannabis can say “you’re being very simple,” but then on the spectrum of those there’s a combination of THC one-to-ones that the doctors prescribe depending on the condition of the patient, the age group, what side effects, right?

But if we look at those two that would be chronic pain THC, which is the psychoactive part of the plant and then CBD that’s very used, at least is mostly known for neurological issues.

I’ll give you my own example: I take CBD every night to go to sleep. As you can imagine, being CEO of this company (laughs)…so I take it to sleep. CBD is a non-psychoactive substance, but of course, there are also patients that have different conditions and can use THC to sleep. My wife for instance, uses a one-to-one mix of THC and CBD, so that tells you also that there’s a lot of uses that it’s really up to the doctor to really be well trained in this, and to give you a variety of options.

I’m telling you about the iPhone One, right? We’re not even going to the five cameras or ten different colors (laughs). But this is what the products would be mostly used for and in Colombia, just Colombia alone there are 6 million people with the prevalence of chronic pain, epilepsy, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders. Today the only alternatives are either surgeries or very heavy opioids. You may or may not know, of course, the world is now turning against opiates, and the big issues that those type of medications have on addiction.

Finance Colombia: I’m from Ohio, and, you know, it’s a terrible…it’s worse than the crack epidemic in the 1990s! I mean our whole cities, and the countryside is devastated by people who get hooked on opiates: Oxycontin, Fentanyl, and all of these other different kinds of drugs, I don’t even know what they’re called. They seem to be terribly addictive and then when they try to get off, people can die from withdrawal symptoms.

Álvaro Torres: Medical cannabis offers a different alternative, it’s a plant that has been in the most negative news of the last 100 years, I’m sure you will appreciate this particularly: this all comes from the United States in the 1915 to the 1920s, and it had nothing to do when it was legalized, it had nothing to do with the plant, it had to do with, you know, unfortunate racial issues, and were, you know…

A Khiron agricultural technician in their Ibagué, Tolima facilities.

Finance Colombia: Yes, anti-Latino, anti-Mexican.

Álvaro Torres: anti-Latino, anti-Mexican, anti-black, because, you know, for these white folks back then it was these are these communities are using marijuana therefore, “stay away from my daughter!” And if you look at the first advertising of those famous movies like Reefer Madness and you look at those posters, it’s extremely bigoted.

Finance Colombia: They still persecute Native Americans because of peyote.

Álvaro Torres: Yeah, exactly.

Finance Colombia: Even to this day.

Álvaro Torres: That came all the way to all our countries, right? And we all have a negative feeling about marijuana, but in the end it’s a plant that’s been around for a thousand years.

Finance Colombia: And the government, some governments like the US, and I’m sure other countries as well, will pressure other governments, and say “we want you to make it illegal” and the other government says “well we don’t want to make it illegal,” they say “well you better make it illegal or you’re going to have problems!”  It’s a fascinating to me how in Jamaica it is technically illegal. I remember when Uruguay said, when Mujica was the president, he said: “we’re going to make it legal” and there was such a scandal!

But Uruguay is still going very well. Everybody is not an advocate, it seems like their problems that they have, now it’s more peaceful than it used to be, but I remember in the US it was a tremendous scandal, then President José Mujica came, and he met with, I think Obama was the president at the time, it was about eight years ago, and that was a big scandal. I remember that there were some maybe diplomatic influences in the US that wanted to try to pressure or punish Uruguay, luckily, they didn’t. I think that that would have been very unjust.

But I remember, I think it was at least the first country in our hemisphere and one of the first countries globally and they said, “look we’re not going to prosecute people for this anymore,” and so far,—I haven’t followed closely—but so far it seems to have worked out.

Álvaro Torres: Well, it’s all progress, I think. The last government of Colombia (of President Juan Manuel Santos) made a really huge step by legalizing it, putting it into law. This government today I would say that even though it’s of course a little bit more conservative, the fact that this government is including cannabis as a medication that now can be covered by the insurance system, that’s an even bigger step. So conservative, liberal, whatever you are, there’s no denying that this is a plant that’s been demonized for too long, that there’s a lot of fear, of course. We have to do a lot of education, and there’s a lot of benefits for patients.

Now, of course, I told you Loren, my business is not on the B2B side, so I’m not in the business of exporting this to the rest of the world. I think it’s going to be a good opportunity also for companies in Medellin, there are a lot of companies there that are looking at that strategy. And, of course, Colombia does have a lot of advantages for that, but for me the most exciting part of this is to be able to change the life of people like Ivan Rene Valenciana for instance. Los Infomantes was telling everybody, that he was suffering from addiction to sleeping pills and then he took cannabis! And they used to listen to that story, and the fact that it’s in our clinic, that it’s our product, that we’re bringing, that  just gets me very excited, and I think that’s where the future of this industry in Colombia is going to go, I think there’s going to be a B2B business, of course, but we’re also developing like—I think about Zerenia, it’s the biggest cannabis clinic in Latin America, it can be; and it’s in Colombia, right? I mean of course my company trades in the Toronto stock exchange.

A year ago I would have never even dreamed that a woman of a hundred years old would be going to a clinic to get cannabis for her muscles and her joints! Also, stories are catching on because people are starting to understand the benefits.

I’m the co-founder of the company, I’m the CEO, I’m based in Colombia, but it’s a Colombian-led team and companies like ours and other companies in this country that are taking the huge whole debt to be able to export value-added in a country that’s known regarding drugs as a difficult place to do business, and I think that’s very exciting and the more patients we can have, the more clinics we can open, the more data that we’re developing, the more products we can develop, I think that’s when Colombia is going to start looking like a clear leader at least in Latin America. And on the other side there are going to be the B2B businesses that want to export to the rest of the world, and there are some companies that have got to focus on building demand, or they’re going to focus on building the supply. I think Colombia can do both, so you can understand why particularly today even with a bit of pandemic things: you know, “the sky is falling” and all of that, I’m very positive because we’re seeing it every day.

Finance Colombia: You guys have made some moves, I think your ticker symbol is KHRNF, is that correct?

Álvaro Torres: Yeah, so we are trading the TSXV and the OTC as KHRNF, and on the Toronto stock exchange KHRN. We also trade in Frankfurt, but that’s day market trading. Most of our shareholders are Canadian and American. It’s incredible how many more US retail investors are catching on to the story. Of course, everybody is excited about cannabis now because of what’s happened in the US, you know.

And the big operators are doing tremendous business, I think that’s all really good, I was talking today to somebody telling them: “Listen, Florida which is one of the hottest markets right now, Florida started in 2017, and I feel that Latin America is at where Florida was four years ago, except with a population that’s 20 times higher, right?” So wouldn’t you like to be investing in Florida four years ago, and see it up to date? So I think that’s what’s happening here because you look at the biggest countries in Latam, right? Mexico already is in a great regulatory place, Brazil has already registered products, Peru is already selling, Colombia is far ahead, Argentina, Uruguay…

So you take these populations. Colombia got it done nine months after we started, it’s not a question of what is going to happen, it is going to happen, every country in Latin America is going to have this insured, why? Because one of the biggest costs to our health care system is imported medications and if I tell you that the biggest prevailing condition all across LatAm is chronic pain, and you and I know that the biggest medication of chronic pain opiate-based medication. It costs the governments a lot of money, and then you can offer a better alternative, that’s even better homemade, because it’s just going to be a matter of time.

But if Colombia did it, there’s no reason why the rest can’t. It’s a very exciting time to look about Latin America, and the best way is that while everybody is focused on the US that’s just leaving a field wide open. So for companies like ours, we can keep growing this region while everybody’s paying attention to the US, and if legalization happens hopefully sooner than later, that’s just going to open a whole new can of good worms in this region. You said it yourself, the only reason all these countries didn’t do it before is because in the US it was very illegal, because all the banks have a US correspondent in New York.

Imagine when that happens you’re talking about insurance, about banking, you’re talking about Facebook, WhatsApp, all of these things opening up to this industry! That’s actually helping our drive, so I may sometimes sound a little bit over enthusiastic but, you know? For what my company and I have experienced the last nine months…legalization and no COVID? that would be huge!

Finance Colombia: So, help me understand your business model. You’re opening clinics and people who are suffering from chronic pain would say “The Tylenol is not working for me…” Let me not try to guess. Tell me your go-to-market strategy. How are you selling the product? How are you distributing the product? You guys grow the product yourself? You guys process it yourself? You have your clinics, but I think you have other supply chain alternatives or other distribution methods? Where do consumers purchase Khiron products?

Álvaro Torres: First of all, let’s go from the consumer backwards. Any patient that is today on the radio, on TV, in news media, in Medellin today seeing, “well there’s a clinic there that has medical cannabis that’s going to be treating pain arthritis all of these things,” the patient gets an appointment at the clinic, the doctor decides on his or her own free, will: “is this a patient that’s that could be suitable for cannabis?”

If that patient is suitable for cannabis, that patient gets a prescription that day, the patient has two alternatives: either they pay for the medication right away or we work on the insurance program, so we can get the product paid for by the government.

Khiron laboratory processing apparatus

In a way that happens almost in the same day. That order goes back to Khiron. On the other hand, we cultivate cannabis, we extract it, and we send all that extract to a lab that’s certified by INVIMA. Every day we produce that order from anywhere in Colombia, because that patient either is physically in Medellín, or is using their cell phone to get on our Doctor Zerenia app so we have patients in Leticia, and we have patients all across Colombia. Some of them go physically, some of them go online and that order gets fulfilled every day. That patient at the same day decides when the doctor gives the prescription if they want that medication delivered at home or they want to pick it up. 95% of the patients decide on home delivery so within the next day that patient gets this medication delivered at home.

If you are in a in a city that’s far away, it may take you maybe one more day. Six days after you take this medication, the clinic is calling up to follow up on that patient. That’s very important: “are you doing okay? Is the dosage working? How can we help you?” The patient reschedules their appointment over the next two months and so on and so forth.

So we produce, we cultivate cannabis all day, we produce it, but we make these units almost every day, and it’s done through the formulations. That’s what we do in our clinics, that’s why we’re expanding them and just to give you an idea, you know, we’re producing almost today 200 new prescriptions a day. When I started the team back in March, it was eight in the first month, so it’s going very fast now. We also have big partnerships with external clinics, so we do the same process. So you go Loren, to your nearby clinic that has an agreement with Khiron; all those doctors have been trained by us in medical cannabis. So you go there they say: “well you may be out of cannabis,” and it’s the same process. And Khiron would be calling the patient just to do the follow-up, and you get the delivery at home. So it’s the entire purpose of what we do is critical to delivering the service to the patient, if you are 75 years old and you have your arthritis, we don’t want you to walk around for two hours to go back and say here’s my medication. Everything we do is about service,

The government of Colombia just recently issued a new decree that’s going to allow us to be able to have these medications delivered by any drugstore or pharmacy, which will make life a lot easier. Because in some cases the patients will say: “yes I want home delivery,” some cases they want to say “no, I want to pick it up at the Drogueria La Rebaja nearby.” So if you look at the biggest, the most challenging part of our business it’s not the production of cannabis, it’s the service, it’s the customer service, how you are doing the appointments, the home delivery and that’s our go-to-market in Colombia.

Therefore, we’re talking about the business of Khiron. I’m not telling you that our business is to sell units, the research is to improve that quality of life and that includes the products, and the service. So why do we do that? Because this is such a new notable thing. A lot of it’s called handholding.” A patient takes a medication like this and they may easily fear or discontinue it because there’s a lot of fear, yes? So you need to be there, you need to show them if you want another appointment, we can have it. How are you taking it? Is the dosage correct? And that level of service is making us grow. It’s not just the quality of the product, which is great and consistent.  How do we work with the patient? That path of changing medication and looking at an alternative. So that is our go-to-market strategy, and that’s what I want to do. We’re talking about in every country in Latin America.

Finance Colombia: So, you guys have clinics now in several cities, and it’s being integrated into the Colombian health system. I know that you guys did a pilot with SURA EPS, there are other, different modalities. It looks like you’re on the verge of being able to be distributed in pharmacies, have you seen any attention or any interest from…I talked to somebody yesterday, I met with somebody, a couple from the United States, and the first time they came to Colombia was to get a medical procedure done and they looked around and they said: “it’s great down here!” And they stayed.

So, they live here because they came here to get an operation because it was less expensive than in the US. Are you seeing that kind of interest? Are you seeing it from foreign patients, or are there any regulatory obstacles to treating foreign patients? Maybe there are regulatory problems in their own country or how easy or difficult that is to deal with here in Colombia?

Álvaro Torres: Well, the medical tourism industry in Colombia has been growing by more than double digits every year in the last five years. Even ourselves in our clinic we see patients from the Netherlands, who come all the way from Aruba to get procedures done here, because in our clinic not only do we do medical cannabis, we also do neurosurgeries that are very specialized. So today in our company we actually have patients even during the pandemic, patients from Aruba that have…Netherlands citizens to come here, and I think the next stage of that, I think there’s a huge opportunity for that here because as, you know, lower costs great service, we have a great sense of service in this country, which is not something that you get to see everywhere else.

That service, the costs, the cost of living, the availability of flights, and then you can add on top of that entire medical cannabis treatment regimen in a country where it’s fully legal. So I think probably the industry has grown a lot, I think there’s another opportunity to couple medical cannabis with that medical tourism. That’s happening already in Colombia.

I think the B2B business may be great, but it’s also a business that it’s eventually a race to zero because everybody wants to sell the cheapest product possible or hold as many people as possible. And we haven’t even seen what the Mexicans are going to do, what the Brazilians are going to do in terms of cultivation.

I think everybody, most people who are abroad start to see Colombia [delivering] the level of that high quality care that we do have, for example the level of surgery of New York City is not necessarily done everywhere else in the world, and the more medical cannabis becomes more mainstream, there are going to be opportunities to attract tourists, attract patients from the US who have to wait 60 days to get a surgery, because we have the [resources] here, and then you can add onto that medical cannabis in some conditions.

I think you are forecasting it well, that’s going to happen. It’s already happening, except now we will add medical cannabis to it. It’s happening in Cali, Medellin, the number of clinics and high-level hospitals and the people in these countries, that’s amazing.

Finance Colombia: You’re in the process of opening clinics. Where are your clinics now?

Álvaro Torres: We have three clinics in Bogota. Big health centers, more than 14,000 square feet, we have one in the north and Carrera 19 & 106, we have one in Country [neighborhood] at 84 & 15, in Parkway which is Teusaquillo, that’s closer to downtown. We open our new satellite clinic in Medellin in the Ophthalmology Center, and we are opening the next 4-5 in Barranquilla, Cali, Bucaramanga, Pereira, Villavicencio, and all these are cities that have more than 500,000 people and the plan is to be able to do all of that within the next seven months.

Finance Colombia: Great, So, how big is the company? Now you raised something like $13 million dollars a few years ago. Tell me about the staff, how many acres or hectares are you growing? You have I think four clinics, now you’re opening more.

Álvaro Torres: So, we’ve raised—we went public in the TSX.V about three years ago. We’ve raised close to $120 million CAD since we started. Today, last year December we closed around $20 million dollars. Our cash burn has been reduced significantly now that we’re increasing our sales, and we have almost no debt. and the only outstanding credit that we have is about $2.5 million on a lease-back because we acquired these clinics when we started in Colombia.

And when it comes down to our production, we spent close to $12 million dollars on a production facility which is not very big compared to what you may be used to. It’s basically one greenhouse of 85,000 square feet and one GMP compliant laboratory for extraction and quality analysis, that’s about say 500 square feet. The rest is the quality control…We can produce up to 10 tons of medical cannabis per year. It’s not the biggest number you will hear in Colombia, there are companies here that are doing 100 hectares (247 acres).

But the way I think about things—I’m an engineer by training—first comes demand and then supply. So, as we keep building our clinics, and growing that demand, we will keep expanding our facilities. But you know, our current needs for this year are met with what we have. If we sell all of the product that we can produce in our facility, that would be close to $80 million dollars of revenue, so I welcome the day when I have to expand it, you know what I mean? And that’s where and what we have been doing with our capital. The construction facility the acquisition of the clinics, all the marketing and training that we have to do to get to this. The expansion into countries like Peru, Mexico, Brazil and Germany which—and the UK, which we are launching very soon. And I think this year we are on the verge of exploding those sales. We started nine months ago in a market that’s really just starting.

We have a what’s called a tight capital structure. We are more than 15% inside owners. I represent the largest shareholder in the company, I haven’t sold a cent of stock. I think everybody in this company is really committed, it’s been four years, but we are just really starting in terms of the market, so the opportunity is very big. I think what we are building something really unique, because this is not just about a business model, it’s about the DNA of the company. It is focused on improving the quality of life of patients and that is a very different way of thinking about cannabis, than just trying to sell product as cheaply as possible.

I think the B2B business may be great, but it’s also a business that it’s eventually a race to zero because everybody wants to sell the cheapest product possible or hold as many people as possible. And we haven’t even seen what the Mexicans are going to do, what the Brazilians are going to do in terms of cultivation. So I think that that low cost cultivation that we can enjoy should be to our advantage. So we’re going to keep selling these units for fifty dollars and it cost four dollars to make, what do we do with that profit? we have to reinvest it back in the service, so we can keep getting that value out and thinking about demand is a lot more sustainable thinking about grams, so I always keep saying, you know, the focus of the companies are brands not grams, because brands win.

You know, anybody can grow grams, so that is in a nutshell what we have done, you know, we are very tight with our cash, mostly used now for the marketing and expansion of the clinics.  we are in a situation right now where we have enjoyed great growth. All of cash has been raised on equity, so no converts, no funny things like that. And I think that puts us in a very unique position. It’s all about finding liquidity, it’s all about finding new investors that want to believe in what this industry is going to do. And you know, we are trading around…historically cannabis has been in the last four years on a wild run, everybody started with Canada and Canadian cannabis was the hottest thing ever. Then, you know, the companies they are not performing as they should be. Now it is the US. I think right now with the Biden election there is a lot of enthusiasm for medical cannabis, but beside that, we have to think about longevity of business models, and if you look at the successful business policy in the US, it’s all about vertical integration of brands. Because that’s what’s going to remain, anybody can cultivate cannabis and everybody who’s in the business always want to make it cheaper, so this is not going to be about cultivating thousands of hectares of supply, it’s going to be who’s able to sell that and create that loyalty with the patient or that consumer.

Finance Colombia: That brings up a question, so, with branding you decided to name the clinic Zerenia, Khiron is the product? Is that? Because Zerenia will be spun off or is going to offer other products, or why are there two separate brands there? Or maybe they’re not two separate brands maybe, I don’t understand, maybe you could tell me the strategy.

Álvaro Torres: It is two separate brands because Khiron…let’s say this product, this is a medical cannabis product [holds up a product], I mean this is an empty box but Zerenia is about healthcare.

Khiron laboratory facilities in Tolima, Ibagué

If a patient goes into the clinic that patient is not necessarily going to get medical cannabis because, remember that our objective is to improve the quality of life. I mean cannabis cannot become something that if you have a headache: “cannabis!” If you, you know, if you’re–. If you want to paint the color red: “cannabis!” So in terms of brand structure, of the company, we have to understand that even though Khiron is a cannabis company, our clinics are not medical cannabis clinics. If you look at what says here. It’s “Zerenia integrative care management with medical cannabis.”

So, when we’re talking about regulations, we talk about clinics, we talk about products, there’s a difference between a product and a brand, and a clinic. Of course, every patient that needs medical cannabis gets a Khiron product, so we build that brand on the product with them that way. But also remember that in Colombia most of Latin America, Khiron as a company, we cannot talk to the patient directly.

If you look today at LinkedIn, you will see that Khiron makes no advertisements of the product, zero. But Zerenia does not advertise Khiron, what Zerenia does is we advertise that medical cannabis is good for you.

That’s why we did that split, and it eventually also means that if a patient goes to a clinic and needs absolutely an analgesic that patient will get an analgesic. Because of course, it’s in our interest to bring medical cannabis into the conversation, the first priority has to be the patient’s health. It’s just that we believe that medical cannabis is an alternative, this is why we grow it. We don’t grow it because we force people to prescribe it, we grow because we keep showing evidence and doctors believe it by themselves, so that is the difference, of course. And Khiron, even the name of the company…we came up with the name because Khiron was the centaur that taught Hercules medicine in ancient mythology, and in ancient mythology, it was the patron saint of pharmacists. That’s where the name of our company comes from because for us from the beginning it’s got to be about that care of patients.

We didn’t want to name the company cannabis anything or marijuana anything because also remember that all the cultural shocks that we have with Colombia and Latin America about marijuana and cannabis, we want to stay away from that. So that’s how that works, Loren.

Finance Colombia: You mentioned that you’re an engineer by background, you’re not a doctor. Why on earth did you decide you had to go through all these regulatory hoops? Colombia has—for a long time, marijuana or cannabis has not been legal. It’s very recent, you had some early successes a few years ago, I know when we first started covering you as far as getting some regulatory authorizations getting quotas, I know Colombia gets a quota from the United Nations, and then you guys got a very significant part of that quota. But how do you go from being an engineer to say: “I want to go into pharmaceuticals and health?” An engineer would go “according to my calculations that’s a big headache!”

Álvaro Torres: Well, you know, engineers also decided they wanted to go to the moon, right? I think engineering is about problem solving at its core, right? So the more problems you have, the more excited you get. But in my personal story, yes, I’ve been in engineering all my life. I built very large projects here in Colombia and Latin America. I worked in very famous engineering firms and my own engineering firms, and such. When Colombia legalized medical cannabis five years ago, it just came to us, and with my partners, we said, “you know, there are very few times in our life that we get to do something that is really unique,” and if you have that entrepreneur mind, you’re always going to be excited about that possibility. Of course, if we had known all of the issues, you may not even get into that right?

But you get on a path and you’re thinking, I mean listen: if the business was B2B I would probably have a tenth of the headaches that I have today because our business is on care and service. That makes it a little more challenging, but, even as an engineer you think about all these problems, you think about the end solution, how you’re going to get there and you assemble that thing! Because remember, engineering is all about teamwork, because no one person knows the answer in particular. Because out of all the engineers, I’m an industrial engineer, so that means I know nothing! (laughs) And so you start getting a really good team of people who want to share your passion, and then on March 20, you show everybody the first video of a patient that is telling everybody: “thank you because what you’ve done has changed my life!”

I tell you that makes all these three years look like nothing because every month you’re having another thousand, two thousand patients that are sending messages and saying, “thank you because now my epileptic daughter is feeling well.”

Six days after you take this medication, the clinic is calling up to follow up on that patient. That’s very important: “are you doing okay? Is the dosage working? How can we help you?”

So, then you’re thinking, “you know, yes, it’s gonna be tougher to get to the one million,” which is our plan, but then we’re going to have a million stories to share with everybody and I think that’s all going to make sense, but it’s always problem solving because you always think about the next stage.

You know, I was watching these documentaries on NASA, going to the moon and there are some people that have to think about the moon while they’re solving how to orbit the earth, and on the back they’re thinking well that’s great that we’re orbiting three times with John Glenn, but we have to think about going to the moon, and even today with landing on Mars, people are thinking “how do we actually have a man on Mars?”

So, I think it’s all about that passion, and all these problems, all these things, but it’s a unique opportunity. I mean Loren, we live in a country and you notice that, almost all our lives particularly in Colombia we produce commodity products. Our biggest exports are coffee, coffee beans, oil. Maybe, flowers are the one thing that we do provide value added, and we keep asking ourselves, “how do we make this economy grow?” And the only answer we give back to ourselves is “well we just keep growing more commodities.”

I was lucky enough to be able to go to school in the US, and I started thinking “well, why don’t we create something that’s actually going to create value?” That is, maybe we can change some part of this, and we don’t want to be the country that cultivates the most cannabis, I don’t want that to happen, I want us to be the country that develops the most cannabis technology, that has the best products, that has the best service, because that is exportable everywhere else.

Those things came to mind with my partners and me, my two co-founders when we started the company. I lead an amazing team that we have here, and everybody’s very motivated. When you feel down, because no, this is not easy, you just look at a couple of videos with these patients recording your stories, you’re thinking, “you know what? We have to keep going!”

Finance Colombia: You know, you’re right. I look at companies here, you look at the “resource curse,” and you look at countries that put out commodities. One of the problems with that is that if all you do is export crops and somebody else puts in the value-add somewhere else, then that’s also where the wealth is created. And you have a lot of countries, whether it’s in the Americas or in Africa or wherever—where they export crops, or raw materials, or petroleum, you look at countries that export petroleum, but they don’t have refineries. Colombia does have refineries, but Colombia still has to import refined petroleum products, even though there are refineries here.

And so when, like you said, when you can export a high margin product like a finished cannabis derived product, then you’re creating wealth obviously for your shareholders, but you’re creating the wealth in Colombia versus…”I’m going to, I don’t know, export—I mean coffee is great, but you export bags of coffee beans that are then roasted in Seattle or somewhere where they charge,  a zillion dollars or $50 bucks for a cup of coffee! So, I think that one of the…I look at Tecnoglass (NASDAQ: TGLS). That’s a company I respect a lot because they don’t just export the raw product, they export environmentally high energy efficiency, treated, finished products that are used in high-end, branded real estate. So it’s like you’re not just exporting a raw green crop, you’re exporting the finished product or you’re creating a finished product and so I look at that, and I think that Colombia needs more of that! So, the best success to you guys, I follow the company, we here at Finance Colombia have followed you for years and so it’s good to finally talk to you.

Álvaro Torres: Thank you Loren, well, you know, just on that last point remember poverty calls poverty. If you are always focused on that commodity, you have to reduce your price, you’re going to pay your people lower, you’re going to reduce your labor costs because you have to produce it lower. Tecnoglass is a fantastic company, I know them very well. I know some of the executives because they are not selling glass, they are building facades for buildings in Miami.

Finance Colombia: Exactly.

Álvaro Torres: So, that’s I think that’s a great point, we all need to think about it. It’s always a longer path, but this is not such a complex business. Medical cannabis the way we look at it, is clinics, and product, and service. It’s not something that’s so far out there because it’s just a new medication that we just reintroduced into the market, and we try to do with really good service. So we can have 50% month-to-month growth, since we started?

Hopefully, you can go and visit our clinic and you can see for yourself because once you get there, you’ll see that. It will tell you everything you need to learn about our company just going there.

Photos, except screenshot, courtesy Khiron Life Sciences