Phytotech is an Australian company that is about to list on the Australian Securities Exchange and has launched an IPO that has raised three times more than it originally proposed. Nothing strange so far, except that the company in question, the first of its kind in Australia, produces and markets marijuana for therapeutic use. Founder and CEO Ross Smith, convicted in 1989 of illegal marijuana cultivation, got the idea to jump into the business last year when he was offered some medicinal marijuana while hiking in New Zealand . “I've always had back problems” he says “but after a couple of puffs I felt nothing and I could easily walk up and down the mountains carrying a heavy backpack”. A few months later, Smith had founded Phytotech in Perth, to sell medicinal marijuana and a proprietary, disposable inhaler to take the prescribed dose. “Unlike the United States and other countries,” he enthuses, “south of the equator there is a vacuum in the field of commercialization of medicinal cannabis”.
"That's why" he adds "that the IPO had such a large number of subscribers". Smith intended to raise a capital of 5 million Australian dollars (about three and a half million euros) and obtained one of 15 million from investors scattered all over the world. Since the cultivation and sale of maijuana is currently prohibited in Australia - but there are bills to change this state of affairs - Phytotech grows its cannabis in Israel, a country where medical cannabis is widely used ( cancer and multiple sclerosis patients, but also war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder), to then sell it in the United States, Canada and Europe. Smith is making long-term plans and has already imagined an advertising campaign along the lines of Clooney's for Nespresso: the romantic background of Lake Como, Smith himself inhaling the smoke of marijuana, two beautiful girls who approach each other attracted by the smell , and at the end the writing “Cannabis by Phytotech. What else?”.
