As Europe’s medical hashish markets proceed to mature, an more and more acquainted sample is starting to emerge.
First, entry opens and demand surges. Then operators and merchandise flood into the market, resulting in the compression of each the value for sufferers and the margins for companies. This, inevitably, is adopted by consolidation as these with out the deep pockets to climate the value crush give technique to those that do.
In Denmark, one of many continent’s longest-running pilot-turned-permanent markets, that cycle seems to be coming into the consolidation section, with one firm rising as a dominant participant in each main product classes.
Stenocare, the Danish oil and extract specialist listed on Nasdaq First North, has spent the previous 12 months quietly assembling a commanding place in its dwelling market.
The current acquisition of competitor CannGros has introduced flower into its operation for the primary time. A string of worldwide partnerships has prolonged its attain into Germany, Norway, and Australia. And this week, it introduced plans to interrupt into France.
“We’re the dominant participant on extracts, we’re the one one with 4 accepted merchandise,” stated CEO Thomas Skovlund Schnegelsberg. “And now we even have 5 merchandise on flower, the place the one different competitor has two.”
The French alternative
Stenocare introduced this week that it has partnered with Institut des Cannabinoïdes Médicaux Français (ICMF) to submit its ASTRUM 10-10 oil product to France’s Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) for reimbursement analysis, because the nation prepares to transition its four-year pilot programme right into a everlasting authorized framework.
Movianto, the pharmaceutical logistics arm of Yusen Logistics Healthcare and France’s main pharma distributor, has additionally been secured because the nationwide distribution associate, giving the enterprise a ready-made path to pharmacies throughout the nation.
As we’ve reported lately, the highly-anticipated French nationwide medical hashish framework is now coming into its remaining levels, set to see the launch of a brand new European market with a probably enormous addressable affected person inhabitants.
Nonetheless, a lot to the dismay of firms which have centred their European operations round Germany’s insatiable urge for food for flower, France’s incoming market is all however omitting it as a format, opening the door for firms main the best way in various codecs.
This dynamic performs on to Stenocare’s core energy as a specialist in pharmaceutical-grade extracts and its proprietary ASTRUM oil know-how, which is designed to enhance the bioavailability and dosing consistency of cannabinoids within the bloodstream.
“France represents some of the vital future markets for medical hashish in Europe,” stated Schnegelsberg. “Submitting the ASTRUM 10-10 file is a key milestone.”
In keeping with native sources conversant in the French course of, approvals may transfer sooner than beforehand anticipated, probably in as little as three months for firms with their pharmaceutical dossiers prepared, although the political timeline stays unpredictable.
However Stenocare’s push into France relies on a basis of hard-won home energy and a consolidation technique that encapsulates this rising maturity cycle.
Home market domination
When Stenocare was based in 2018, it made a deliberate resolution to focus solely on oil and extract merchandise, betting that physicians would finally gravitate in the direction of a format extra comparable with conventional medication.
“You hear from docs that they didn’t go 5 years to college to prescribe joints,” Schnegelsberg informed Enterprise of Hashish. “It was a little bit of an boastful manner of it.”
That wager hasn’t but absolutely paid off. By his personal estimates, flower merchandise nonetheless account for roughly 60% of the European medical hashish market, and by 2024, Stenocare’s management was asking itself why it was competing in solely 40% of the addressable market.
Having initially pursued vertical integration and constructing out its personal cultivation facility, Stenocare pivoted to a extra asset-light enterprise mannequin, divesting its cultivation operations in late 2024.
With this technique entrance of thoughts, Stenocare regarded in the direction of established Danish flower gamers moderately than re-establishing its personal operations to unravel this challenge.
All through 2025, Stenocare watched Denmark’s two flower suppliers turn out to be locked in a value spiral, slashing retail costs by as a lot as 50% in six months. The margins, Schnegelsberg stated, have been clearly unsustainable.
“We began their quarterly studies, listening to their press releases, and we type of noticed a pattern that they have been hurting, and hurting extra because the yr progressed,” he stated. “We may see their burn fee on money was manner past what that they had within the financial institution.”
By late summer time, Stenocare approached DanCann Pharma, proprietor of the flower model CannGros and the market chief within the class. The deal closed in November 2025, a share-for-share alternate that gave Stenocare 100% of CannGros’s subsidiary, together with 5 accepted flower merchandise, in return for five million newly issued shares.
Crucially, Stenocare acquired the corporate with out workers, with out debt, and with out operational commitments. What it obtained was 5 merchandise accepted by the Danish Medicines Company, the equal, Schnegelsberg stated, of 5 years of regulatory funding.
As such, Stenocare was in a position to combine CannGros’s merchandise into its current infrastructure with out including any prices. Its extra automated operations meant it may take up the work that DanCann had been doing manually, with no need extra employees or facility enlargement.
“We may principally combine it into our present setup,” stated Schnegelsberg. “So with out even elevating the costs, we may nonetheless flip this into a beautiful enterprise.”
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Denmark’s pricing system for prescription medicines is uncommon in Europe and helps clarify how the flower market deteriorated so shortly. Each two weeks, suppliers submit their desired value and out there quantity right into a blind public sale system.
The next day, costs are printed, frozen for the fortnight, and mechanically cascaded to each pharmacy within the nation. Crucially, pharmacists are legally obliged to dispense the lowest-priced product the place a substitute is out there, that means that in classes with competing merchandise, there’s a structural incentive to undercut.
It was this mechanism that fuelled the flower value spiral by means of 2025, as operators raced to the underside to safe the cheapest-product designation. For Stenocare, which had no flower merchandise on the time, it was a race it may afford to observe from the sidelines.
However as soon as it acquired CannGros, Stenocare moved in the wrong way, elevating costs by round 45% from day one, pulling them again in the direction of pre-spiral ranges. Its sole remaining flower competitor adopted swimsuit.
“They have been welcoming the truth that we got here in and raised the costs,” Schnegelsberg stated. “So now we’re head-to-head on the next stage. That really provides to the enterprise case in a really constructive manner.”
The result’s an organization that now instructions each classes of Denmark’s medical hashish market. In oils and extracts, Stenocare’s 4 accepted merchandise face successfully no competitors; its two rivals every maintain a single product within the lowest-volume section. In flower, it now holds 5 merchandise towards a single competitor with two, and holds exclusivity on three of these for all the Danish market.
Additional worldwide enlargement routes
With France and Spain poised to launch flower-less markets within the coming months, Stenocare stays targeted on strengthening the business footprint of its ASTRUM oil know-how.
In January, the corporate introduced a brand new partnership with WEECO Pharma GmbH to launch a co-branded ASTRUM 10-10 extract in Germany, Europe’s largest medical hashish market. The deal sits alongside an current relationship with Adress Pharma, however WEECO brings a extra sturdy gross sales engine, with medical consultants visiting docs and pharmacists instantly and investing in instructional supplies across the product.
Schnegelsberg stated the partnership is designed to check how far the ASTRUM model can go in Germany earlier than increasing the product line additional. “They wish to see how they’re performing based on their very bold plans, after which we’ll see different product innovation primarily based on that oil know-how going ahead,” he stated.
Its CannGros acquisition is predicted so as to add DKK 4-6m in annual income, supporting a revised break-even goal of 2026, pushed again from an authentic goal of 2025 as the corporate navigated regulatory headwinds and a troublesome home market.
For now, Schnegelsberg stated, 2026 is about consolidation; integrating CannGros, delivering on the enterprise case, and letting the worldwide partnerships construct momentum. Flower exports, he added, are a dialog for 2027.
“We don’t wish to rock the boat any additional,” he stated.
