Because the European medical hashish market has developed, expanded and matured over the past half-decade, Portugal has performed a vital position within the world provide chain, incomes a repute because the ‘doorway to Europe’.
Dried flower from Canada, Colombia, Thailand and a swathe of different world exporters has been diverted by way of the Portuguese processing hub for almost all of the European market’s existence.
Its dominance, constructed on a forgiving regulatory framework, low prices and a cluster of EU-GMP processing amenities, is now underneath strain.
As Enterprise of Hashish reported earlier this week, Canadian export figures from the final 18 months present that Portuguese flower imports from Canada collapsed 86.6% from their peak of CA$12.4 million in April 2025 to only CA$1.67 million in February 2026, whereas exports on to Germany skyrocketed.
Twin enforcement crackdowns, Operation Erva Daninha in Portugal final Could and a sweeping sequence of raids throughout North Macedonia in February, have been a driving power behind this shift.
The fallout has been tangible. Export permits in Portugal, beforehand processed inside a month, stretched to 70 days or extra within the aftermath of the raids. In North Macedonia, the place over 40 tonnes had been seized from licensed entities, all 43 permitted producers are actually underneath inspection.
Now, exporters are searching for a brand new market to fill this hole, one freed from the uncertainty more and more related to each of those processing hubs.
A unique type of hub
Americo Folcarelli, co-founder of Extraction Options, an EU-GMP licensed contract manufacturing organisation based mostly close to Alicante, has spent three years constructing the type of facility he believes Portugal’s fast growth by no means correctly prioritised.
“I noticed this coming a 12 months in the past,” he informed Enterprise of Hashish. “Which is why we’re doing this in Spain.”
His firm was initially constructed as an API play, centered on distillate purification and extraction. Nevertheless, when the ‘warning indicators’ from Portugal started to build up, it pivoted towards CMO providers.
“Our gross sales pitch is we’re not Portugal, we’re not North Macedonia, and we’re in Europe. That’s it,” he continued.
The distinction with Portugal’s regulatory expertise is pointed. The place Infarmed’s export allow course of deteriorated to between six and ten months at its worst following final 12 months’s raids, Folcarelli describes a markedly completely different dynamic with Spain’s regulator, AEMPS.
A current first import allow, anticipated to take as much as 9 weeks, was processed in underneath three, with AEMPS proactively contacting Well being Canada to expedite verification moderately than ready on documentation.
Noting that his trade counterparts typically warn of prolonged delays when coping with Spanish authorities, he notes that in his current expertise, ‘the professionalism proven by our regulator has been a breath of contemporary air.’
Spain is already a significant cultivation hub, producing an estimated 23.4 tonnes of medical hashish in 2023. Round seven firms maintain business cultivation licences, with operators like Linneo Well being, Medalchemy and Canadmedics already exporting important volumes throughout Europe.
Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless in its infancy as a processing hub. Extraction Options at present operates at a processing capability of round 1.6 tonnes monthly. For context, within the first six months of 2025, Portugal exported round 27,00kg.
Folcarelli is upfront about this hole, however argues that the gradual shift away from these historic hubs will probably be diversified.
“What you’re going to see is a shift from Portugal and Macedonia to some place else. As an alternative of getting one place that I’m sending every thing to, you say hey, I’m going to de-risk. One is zero, two is one. Should you solely have one logistical route, you don’t have anything.”
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There may be at present, by Folcarelli’s personal evaluation, just one credible EU-GMP-1 launch facility working in Spain. Whereas this can be a clear business alternative, it is usually a constraint that can doubtless be on the radar of exporters searching for provide chain resilience.
With the shift away from Portugal in current months, the nation’s processing infrastructure is now pivoting to satisfy these new calls for.
Arthur de Cordova, CEO of Zeil and a detailed observer of European provide chain dynamics, notes a major shift amongst Portugal’s remaining GMP operators. The place a 12 months in the past, 80% of their enterprise was GMP washing of imported product, many have flipped to a white label mannequin, drawing on a number of home GACP farms to fulfil bespoke orders from German wholesalers underneath the wholesaler’s personal model.
The GACP farmers in Portugal are getting higher and higher at getting their upstream processes in place,” de Cordova mentioned. “The GMP operator says, right here’s my spec. I would like it this tight on microbials, this efficiency, this terpene profile. That’s what my wholesaler in Germany needs. And if you happen to hit this spec, I’ll purchase as a lot as potential at this worth. All of the farmers are competing in opposition to one another to satisfy that spec at the most effective worth.”
The extract query
The place Spain diverges most sharply from Portugal’s mannequin is within the form of its home market. The nation’s forthcoming medical hashish framework is predicted to exclude flower from prescription, channelling sufferers as an alternative towards standardised extracts, together with tinctures, capsules, and vapes.
For Folcarelli, whose facility is constructed round distillate purification moderately than flower processing, this can be a characteristic moderately than a bug. Physicians, he argues, are proof against prescribing flower exactly as a result of constant dosing is unattainable to ensure. A affected person given a 10-gram prescription can exhaust it in two days and search extra elsewhere.
“Spain is saying: we now have social golf equipment, if you wish to smoke hashish you possibly can. Now, if you happen to’re telling us it’s medication, you’re going to should persuade us. And if we’re going to do a prescription, then we wish it carried out constantly, at all times carried out in a laboratory.”
This rising stress between flower and what’s colloquially known as ‘hashish 2.0’ merchandise is already taking part in out throughout world medical markets, together with Germany, the UK, France and Australia, and is more likely to grow to be a defining characteristic of the long run growth of the trade.
“Whereas everybody’s going to be combating over flower,” Folcarelli mentioned, “we’re going to be wanting forward.”
Whether or not Spain can capitalise on this new alternative stays to be seen, however the diversification of the movement of medical hashish into Europe is one thing that can solely speed up because the market develops, particularly if it continues to lean in the direction of pharmaceutical requirements.
What Spain has that Portugal lacked at an equal stage, Folcarelli argues, is the advantage of hindsight. “We get to start out with a clear slate. We’re not going to say sure to all people.”
