Yahoo Finance Europe's weed and CBD market tipped to soar over 2400% and 400%
Europe’s cannabis and cannabidiol (CBD) markets are set to grow exponentially over the next few years, with the weed sector set to rise over 2400% and CBD set to grow over 400% by 2023.
That’s from a new report, first seen by Yahoo Finance UK, by analytics and market research firm Brightfield Group, which provides benchmark data for legal CBD and cannabis industries.
Europe’s CBD market was estimated at $318m in 2018 and is tipped to rise to $416m in 2019, according to the report, entitled European CBD & Cannabis Market 2019 Report. CBD is then expected to grow to nearly $1.7bn by 2023.
The market is “poised to grow more quickly with both the likely blessing of global bodies such as the UN, and the European Union’s Novel Foods Act (health and safety regulations) eventually permitting for CBD to be sold like other ingestible products on the mainstream market,” Brightfield said in the report.
Brightfield identified two drivers that could lead to a consistent rise in CBD in particular.
The group noted that organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO) “have maintained a strictly anti-cannabis stance over the course of decades,” but now “appear to be warming to the prospect of legal CBD markets operating outside of international drug control conventions.” On top of that, discussions at the state level “have been much more friendly toward CBD’s legalization and use than that of cannabis overall.”
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Secondly, Brightfield said, European countries have “tremendous spending power” of $17tn combined GDP in 2017, and “many consumers around the region are seeking alternatives to tobacco and pharmaceutical use — needs that CBD appeals to.”
Meanwhile, Europe’s cannabis market is estimated to grow from $316m in 2018 to nearly $8bn by 2023, as “the tide is turning in Europe, and around the globe, when it comes to cannabis regulation,” according to Brightfield. The legal cannabis market is poised to “grow rapidly,” even though it is still “rather small.”
“Once established, they will pave the way for a stable and scalable medical cannabis market across the region, rather than the patchwork that is in place today,” Brightfield said.
For example, Germany is currently Europe’s largest medical cannabis market and Brightfield expects it could grow from $73m in 2018, to $2.7bn in 2023. The group also identified the UK and France as having the greatest potential growth rates “as regulations are loosened to allow for sales outside of expensive pharmaceutically compounded products and a broader range of qualifying medical conditions in the UK.”
