Business View Magazine | December 2018

110 111 formulation elements), as well as distribution and retail downstream (pharmacies, direct medical patients, and future recreational retail in Canada). Today,we have assets and capabilities that span the entire seed-to-sale market for cannabis.” BVM: How did you raise the capital? Rifici: “We took over a shell company that was already listed–our first raise was just over $50 million in July 2017.To date,we’ve gone back to market several times and raised over $350 million in the last year.At this point,we’re now fully funded for our existing plans–both building up cultivation assets, as well as processing and manufacturing capabilities.We now have over 100 employees, since we concluded an acquisition recently of a company called KGK, a contract research organization (CRO), to help us do clinical trials. “Auxly itself has 40 employees working out of Toronto, and we have five wholly-owned subsid- iaries, including this latest CRO acquisition; our operations in Uruguay; a wholly-owned licensed producer in Canada called Kolab; a wholly-owned licensed producer applicant called Robinsons Cannabis (growing what we think is the best quality flower); and a company called Dosecann, which is our extraction and R&D facility out in Prince Edward Island.” AUXLY CANNABIS GROUP INC. BVM: You have companies in all aspects of the industry– is your plan to invest wherever you see value? Rifici: “My focus is on the product side. Currently in Canada, we don’t have a wide variety of products, due to the regulatory environment.We can sell flower in the medical and recreation- al markets, and limited types of oil products, but in the next year we’ll see the emergence of many other kinds of product formats you’d find in dis- pensaries, such as vape pens, edibles, tinctures - that’s where the long-term brands will start getting creative and resonating with customers. “I think the product manufacturing, R&D, and extraction capabilities are very important to having the input ma- terials to create those products. But the cultivation, particularly in Canada, is a means to an end. You can have the best brand, best formulations in the world, but if you can’t get the supply to make those products, you won’t have any product on the shelf. Our view is that you need to have enough cultivation to support your downstream activities, but that is not the core focus. It’s an im- portant building block to create those higher value extracted products.” BVM: Being in the cannabis industry, do you find it challenging dealing with financial institutions? Rifici: “Some of our big banks in Canada are still reticent to back the