The UK’s first fully-licensed EU-GMP medical cannabis cultivation facility has opened its doors to doctors, as its first products were made available on prescription for patients earlier this month.
After five years and over £10 million in investment, Dalgety has become the first facility in the UK with a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) licence to cultivate, manufacture and supply medical cannabis from a single location.
Over the last few weeks, prescribing doctors have been touring the 30,000ft indoor facility, located on a ‘top secret’ site in the Midlands, as its first products were shipped to patients at the beginning of February.
Currently only half of the site is in operation, with the aim of producing enough plants to fulfil up to 4,000 prescriptions a month. By 2026, when the company expands to full capacity, the site is projected to produce 2,600 kg of cannabis per year.
Dalgety has undergone four audits by the Home Office and MHRA before being granted its Schedule I Controlled Drug license and later an EU-GMP Cannabis API manufacturing license. According to Leavesley in total it has undergone 700 analytical tests, with two years of fine tuning, and nine batches grown during validation work.
Until now almost all of the products prescribed in the UK have been imported, but there is growing demand for a domestic supply.
Dalgety CEO, James Leavesley, believes the company can help address some of the main challenges facing patients including stock issues, concerns over consistency and quality, and delays in receiving their prescription.
“Being located in the UK has its huge advantages,” he says. “Once it’s finished processing here it is sent off to the lab for tests and can be in the patients’ hands within two weeks.”
He continues: “The level of control that you see here, the quality of the product at the end of it, and the quick delivery, are what makes us different from what’s currently on the market.”
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