Northern Leaf, the Jersey-based medical hashish cultivator, seemed all however sure to comply with within the footsteps of Curaleaf, Aurora and Tilray to develop into the British Isles’ very personal worldwide hashish celebrity.
In 2021, the peak of the worldwide ‘inexperienced rush’, Northern Leaf was granted the primary British high-THC industrial cultivation licence since GW Prescribed drugs (now Jazz Prescribed drugs) in 1998.
By this level, it had already secured 100,000sq ft of glasshouse house and had already spent £12.5m buying and refitting the true property, with plans to speculate an additional £6m.
Regardless of having a pleasant regulator in Jersey’s authorities, all the cash it might spend, and the second House Workplace licence in British historical past, by early 2024 it was teetering getting ready to liquidation, struggling to boost working capital funding, and on the tail finish of a second failed merger in as many months.
It’s, sadly, far too widespread a story within the hashish sector, and one which often ends there. However Northern Leaf’s subsequent chapter was completely different. Two skilled hashish entrepreneurs wager that the underlying facility might succeed with the appropriate group and community and got down to flip its largely unused capability right into a commercially viable operation.
The outcomes thus far recommend they have been proper…
Below a brand new administration group led by growers with greater than 50 years of mixed trade expertise, use of the ability has elevated from round one-quarter to three-quarters of its capability.
Northern Leaf now employs greater than 50 folks throughout cultivation, manufacturing, engineering, high quality and administration, making it the biggest employer in Jersey’s medical hashish sector.
The corporate produced roughly 6.75 tonnes of medical hashish in 2025 and exported nearly 3.6 tonnes of that dried flower to Germany, its most essential market. That very same 12 months, income reached £8m – 5 instances the earlier 12 months’s determine – and the corporate recorded its first EBITDA-positive 12 months.
These figures are the result of adjustments made throughout nearly each a part of the enterprise: its funds, genetics, cultivation, post-harvest processing and path to market.
However the entrepreneurs behind the turnaround hint these good points again to a wager they made in spring 2024 – that Northern Leaf’s drawback was not the ability itself, however the way in which it was getting used.
The wager
Ed Wilkinson, now Northern Leaf’s chairman, began out as a hashish grower, not a financier. In California, he based and constructed Half Moon Develop, the primary operation permitted to domesticate hashish commercially in San Mateo County when it opened its 120,000 sq ft blended mild cultivation facility in 2019.
Wilkinson had beforehand run a farm in Humboldt County, acquiring solely the second licence issued by the authority in 2016 amongst over 2,000 candidates. He steered the enterprise via California’s brutal 2021 value crash, when a pound that had fetched as much as $2,000 fell to $600 or much less, and weaker companies collapses.
So, when information that the Northern Leaf facility was arising on the market, he recognised the ‘Ferrari’ hiding underneath the pile of purple tape. A completed, EU-GMP-accredited facility he prompt was on supply for ‘lower than 10 cents on the greenback’, was a possibility he couldn’t ignore.
After scraping the cash collectively to place in a £2.5m supply in Might 2024 and enduring sleepless nights about what he was getting himself into, he formally took management of the corporate in July that 12 months.
The corporate’s personal filings word that two skilled hashish operators ‘took a leap of religion and transferred the required funds in time to forestall the corporate’s collapse.’
Wilkinson already knew Steven Tan, who was independently circling the corporate, and recognised in him the chief govt the enterprise wanted to get again on observe. Tan took the reins as CEO simply weeks later in September.
The pair believed Northern Leaf’s drawback was not the ability itself however the hole between its substantial funding and its capacity to domesticate and promote hashish constantly at scale. With skilled operators now holding the keys to the ‘Ferrari’, that principle was about to be examined.
Northern Leaf’s Jersey facility produced 6.5 tonnes in 2025.
A facility with no enterprise
Solely after trying underneath the bonnet, following the acceptance of his rescue bid, did Wilkinson totally perceive what he had simply purchased.
In a letter to shareholders in April 2025, the corporate stated it had inherited roughly £9m in secured debt tied to the location and tools, alongside £3.5m owed to legacy collectors.
Northern Leaf’s authentic technique centred on securing a London itemizing. It introduced plans to go public in 2021 and raised additional funding over the next years, however the IPO didn’t materialise.
By early 2024, the corporate had raised or borrowed greater than £30m and secured EU-GMP accreditation, but had solely generated round £400,000 in income and left a lot of its working capability unused.
A proposed reverse takeover with Scottish CBD enterprise Voyager Life was supposed to supply a rescue route however collapsed in April 2024 after the related fundraising fell quick. The corporate remained vulnerable to liquidation and urgently wanted working capital.
Wilkinson and his enterprise colleague, Wray Herbert-King, together with a number of the present Northern Leaf shareholders, responded with a £2.5m convertible mortgage word, which was unsecured and interest-free over three years.
This funding secured the ability’s fast future, however turning it right into a sustainable enterprise would require a distinct method to its funds, cultivation and path to market.
Rebuilt by growers
By the point Tan and Wilkinson have been formally on the helm, the work to revive Northern Leaf was already underneath method.
On the monetary facet, they labored with lenders and legacy collectors to restructure the corporate’s obligations and set up what the board described as a ‘sustainable monetary path ahead’.
Lenders, and, within the firm’s phrases, ‘the vast majority of our collectors’, have been keen to work with the brand new homeowners permitting the board to assemble a ‘sustainable monetary path ahead’ and transfer from ‘survival mode to a correct turnaround’.
The operational adjustments ran deeper, starting with the strains it devoted its appreciable rising house to. Tan, the incoming chief govt, is as a lot a breeder as a supervisor. Northern Leaf’s head of cultivation, Asaf Shaked, credit him with bringing in a lot of the corporate’s genetics library.
The nursery now runs a steady ‘phenohunt’ – lots of of seedlings are grown and assessed, with greater than 90% rejected so the group can establish the 2 or three strongest crops to make use of as industrial moms for future crops.
New strains, Shaked defined to Enterprise of Hashish, are chosen for his or her yield, odor, density and the way cleanly they run via processing, alongside cannabinoid content material.
“If it’s not promoting, it’s not promoting,” Shaked says. “So we’re pushed by market demand.”
Downstream, the group reorganised the processing line to extend throughput whereas additionally placing beforehand unused capability to work.
Head of manufacturing and amenities Andrew Dunlop, who helped design the ability and has labored there because it was constructed, stated manufacturing elevated nearly instantly after the takeover.
“Just about right away after Ed purchased the enterprise, we went from one compartment to 2 compartments, principally in a single day,” he stated.
The group additionally moved to fewer, bigger batches, decreasing the cleansing and reset time between manufacturing runs whereas retaining the identical documented quality control.
Processing that ‘used to do about 100 kgs in 32 days,’ Dunlop says, now strikes ‘about 250 kgs in about eight days.’
With a cutting-edge facility at their disposal, the group shifted their priorities to output, yield, value and high quality, and the numbers have adopted.
Collectively, the extra cultivation house, genetics chosen for industrial efficiency and bigger manufacturing runs allowed Northern Leaf to extend output considerably. The ‘Ferrari’ was starting to carry out as its new homeowners believed it might.
Bringing extra of the worth chain in-house
Northern Leaf holds MHRA GMP Half II certification and provides dried medical hashish flower in bulk as an lively pharmaceutical ingredient. Its worldwide companions full the later levels of producing, packaging and branding earlier than the medication reaches sufferers.
The corporate now desires to convey extra of that course of on-island and seize what Tan described as better “downstream worth” for the advantage of your entire Jersey hashish cluster, retaining worth within the island and guaranteeing higher high quality and management.
The corporate has already taken a step in that course via its on-site cryopasteurisation facility.
The non-irradiation course of reduces naturally occurring micro organism and mildew whereas preserving delicate terpene profiles. Bringing it in-house provides Northern Leaf better management over every batch and reduces its reliance on exterior suppliers.
“Protecting this functionality on-site means it’s built-in into our personal managed course of as a substitute of being outsourced to a 3rd get together,” Tan stated.
“We resolve whether or not remedy is critical utilizing batch-specific testing and high quality knowledge, whereas sustaining full traceability all through the method.”
A possibility for Jersey
Tan and Wilkinson argue that Jersey’s observe file of regulating complicated industries and proximity to mainland Europe give Northern Leaf a shorter and extra predictable path to market than producers in lots of competing jurisdictions. They consider these benefits might create a wider alternative for the Island as demand for medical hashish grows.
“Jersey has a possibility, with its nimble authorities, strategic location and beneficial tax base, to develop into a significant participant within the international hashish trade because the sector continues to develop,” Wilkinson stated.
However Tan cautioned that realising that chance would require continued collaboration between the trade, authorities and vitality suppliers.
Power accounts for greater than 30% of Northern Leaf’s manufacturing prices, he stated, making the price of energy more and more essential as international manufacturing shifts in the direction of lower-cost jurisdictions.
“It’s key that the vitality corporations perceive they’re a part of the economics of localised hashish manufacturing,” Tan stated. “It’s clear from international market forces that manufacturing might be pushed into low-cost vitality areas. The answer is extra collaboration, which might profit all stakeholders, together with most of the people.”
Tan stated Jersey’s regulatory framework would wish to “proceed to evolve” because the market develops, sustaining “sturdy and safe” controls whereas making a beneficial atmosphere through which the trade can compete globally – pointing to the Island’s speedy export allowing course of for instance of the place Jersey has already demonstrated a bonus.
The subsequent wager
To date, Wilkinson’s wager that the ability might succeed underneath skilled operators has been vindicated. Northern Leaf has put beforehand unused infrastructure to work, elevated manufacturing and constructed a path to market.
Its subsequent problem – shared by Jersey’s different hashish producers – is to seize extra of the worth created after cultivation by treating, processing and finally packaging completed medicines within the Island.
It comes as the corporate additionally explores alternatives in import, processing and distribution as value compression and rising vitality prices reshape hashish manufacturing in Europe.
A blueprint for distressed belongings?
As consolidation continues throughout North America and Europe, bigger operators are buying distressed hashish companies and absorbing their belongings. Northern Leaf’s story factors to a different potential end result.
The tens of millions invested in cultivation amenities world wide needn’t be written off when their authentic enterprise fashions fail. With the appropriate working experience, high quality methods and entry to clients, these belongings can nonetheless develop into commercially productive.
Wilkinson’s first wager was that Northern Leaf’s ‘Ferrari’ may very well be made to carry out. The subsequent is that the corporate can hold extra of the worth it creates.
