Blueberries Medical Corp (CNSX:BBM) CEO on Joint Venture with Cannava in Argentina

Blueberries Medical Corp (CNSX:BBM) (OTCMKTS:BBRRF) (FRA:1OA) is a Latin American-based licensed producer of premium extracts and oils for the medical cannabis market, with operations in Colombia and Argentina. CEO Patricio Stocker explains what sets the company apart from other Colombian cannabis companies. Blueberries’ geographic location provides a low-cost growing advantage and Stocker explains the company’s model is highly scalable. Stocker indicates Blueberries plans to undertake its first extractions as well as earn EU GMP certification for its Colombian operations this year. Blueberries has a joint venture with Cannabis Avatara, S.E. (Cannava), a state-owned cannabis company in Argentina. This partnership with the government of Jujuy, an Argentine province, separates Blueberries from other companies. Stocker highlights that the deal with Cannava allows Blueberries to enter and develop products not only in Argentina, but will also provides easier access to other Mercosur countries such as Brazil.

Transcript:

Narrator: Blueberries Medical Corp is a Latin American licensed producer of cannabis with its primary operations located in the Bogota savanna region of Central Colombia and operations currently being established in Argentina.

Blueberries is fully licensed for cultivation, production, domestic distribution, and international export of CBD and THC-based medical cannabis.

The company has 288 million issued and outstanding shares, with management ownership sitting at 18.68 percent. Blueberries Medical Corp is listed on the CSE under the symbol BBM.

Ricki Gurwitz: Joining me now is Patricio Stocker. He’s the CEO of Blueberries Medical Corp, and he joins me in studio. Thank you for being with us.

Patricio Stocker:  Thank you very much, Ricki, for inviting me today.

Ricki Gurwitz: Of course. So tell us a little bit about your company.

Patricio Stocker:  Okay. Blueberries Medical is a leading Latin American cannabis producer of extracts and oils of premium medicinal grade.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay, and what sets you apart from other Colombian cannabis companies?

Patricio Stocker:  Okay, first of all, we have several differentiators. We are, we have locations and operations in Colombia and in Argentina. In Colombia we’re a fully licensed cannabis company, ready to produce agriculturally, to extract, to make products, and to export to the world, wherever this is possible. And in Argentina, we have a joint venture with Cannava, which is the state-owned company in the sub-tropical part of Argentina. So in both locations, we have a great production cost advantage. So some people say it’s an unfair production cost advantage because it is so differentiating from the northern and the southern producers around the world. So this is the key differentiator.

Our second differentiator is that we have a very scalable model that we can produce how much ever is needed. The third one is our team, a very experienced team that can deploy the business plan and the execution as we’re expecting this.

Finally, we have a very, very interesting point, which is still our valuation. We’re still like a secret, if you compare us with the other peers in Latin America. We are one of the three, four leading producers in Latin America that will be successful and that will lead the market on the long run, and we are the lowest-valued, right now. Probably after the next days and the next weeks, this will change.

Ricki Gurwitz: Hope so for you! And do you currently export anywhere?

Patricio Stocker:  No. We’re, the upcoming catalyst for this year is to do the first commercial crop in Quarter 3 in Colombia, to do the first extractions, also to have finalized extraction plant, and EU GMP certification in Colombia within this year. So we will start export and sales in Colombia within 2019.

Ricki Gurwitz: So you’re not currently selling right now?

Patricio Stocker:  We are currently not selling.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay. So that’s what investors have to look forward to? Okay. So I want to talk to you –

Patricio Stocker:  But what’s very important – no company is currently exporting out of Colombia.

Ricki Gurwitz: But selling.

Patricio Stocker:  Somewhere selling, yes.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay. Now, you recently listed publicly; you’re currently listed right now on the Canadian Stock Exchange under the ticker BBM. Has there been a lot of news from your company since you first listed?

Patricio Stocker:  Yes, there are several news that were coming up. The main news are the new joint venture with the Argentinian government; I think this is something key. Another important news is that I joined the team.

Ricki Gurwitz: Yes, congratulations!

Patricio Stocker:  Thank you very much.

Ricki Gurwitz: Yes, March 20^th, right?

Patricio Stocker:  Yes. Correct.

Ricki Gurwitz: From Pharmacielo.

Patricio Stocker:  I had been developing the last four and a half years, the cannabis business in Colombia. So we started with Pharmacielo, a great company that was the first one to get into Colombia and develop this market, and we started when this wasn’t possible, and we started to talk to the ministers and to the government in general to convince them about the great opportunity of producing, or in Colombia, and generating a new industry.

Finally, after several years, we convinced the government, okay? And the rest of the story of Pharmacielo, you know it. I had been the Chairman of Pharmacielo, Director and CEO for several years. Now Pharmacielo is public, a company which is close to $1 billion.

Blueberries is a company that is replicating a similar business model, but improving it with our strategic partnerships and worldwide distribution concepts.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay, so let’s go a little bit further along that line. You’re talking about you’re very similar to Pharmacielo, but there are some differences. So, can you elaborate on how you kind of plan to differentiate yourself from Pharmacielo, and maybe be more successful than your previous company?

Patricio Stocker:  Okay. The key issues which differentiate us are that we also have production location in Argentina. We’re starting the pilot project within this year; the first hectare. We’ll ramp it up to 30 hectares in total. The big differentiator.

Ricki Gurwitz: And what would your production capacity be?

Patricio Stocker:  The total production capacity in around five years would be around 2 million kilograms of dried flower.

Ricki Gurwitz: At what cost?

Patricio Stocker:  This capacity could be ramped up quicker or bigger, whatever is needed; so we have a very, very scalable project in Colombia and in Argentina. In Colombia, we’re in the best flower production region; 70 percent of all flowers that are produced in Colombia are produced in the region where we have our two owned properties, in this Bogota savannah.

In Argentina, we have this joint venture that allows us to scale to whatever size we would like to scale. Our cost of production is in Colombia is around $0.10 a gram.

Ricki Gurwitz: It’s all outdoor.

Patricio Stocker:  We are running our business model more conservatively.

Ricki Gurwitz: It’s all outdoor?

Patricio Stocker:  No, it’s all in open air greenhouses.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay.

Patricio Stocker:  It’s the same model as the flower growers in Colombia. It’s not a greenhouse like you imagine here in Canada; it’s an open-air greenhouse, it’s a greenhouse that has a much lower cost to generate. But this assures you that you don’t have any pollution of your plants, that you give the excess water to the plants, that you protect them better and you have steady temperatures. And the rest is done by nature in Colombia.

Ricki Gurwitz: And sun. You guys are lucky. You have that all year round, right?

Patricio Stocker:  Colombia is a little bit different compared here to Toronto.

Ricki Gurwitz: Just a little.

Patricio Stocker:  Not today.

Ricki Gurwitz: No. So I want to talk to you also a little bit about your partnership with the government, because that’s something that is a bit different from other cannabis companies. So how does that also, you know, give you a leg up in the industry?

Patricio Stocker:  Okay, we have this partnership with the province of Jujuy, which is in the sub-tropical part, very north of Argentina, a region where a lot of tobacco is also grown. Very well logistically located close to an airport, a free trade zone that we will establish there for our production. The advantage to do this with a government entity in this joint venture will allow us to enter easily the Argentinian market, develop products for this market and for the medical market. So here, this opens up better opportunity to get into countries like Brazil. Countries like Mexico, we will approach directly from Colombia.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay. Now I want to ask you about your name: why Blueberries?

Patricio Stocker:  Blueberries was a company that was founded in 2015, and originally, the founders brought a new variety or special variety from Oregon of blueberries to Colombia. They developed this successfully, and started selling product to the major or to the biggest retailers in the country. In 2017, the founders of this company discovered the cannabis business that we were developing in parallel in this country, got the first CBD license in 2018, were fully licensed. But this is the reason of the name Blueberries, which is, by the way, a beautiful name.

Ricki Gurwitz: It’s lovely. Just, you know, curious as to how it came about. So we’re almost out of time, but you know, of course there are a lot of investors who watch this show; so I wanted to just ask you kind of an investor-related question, which is, if you could tell me a bit about, you know, market cap, how many shares you have outstanding, anything that might draw investors to putting their money in your company.

Patricio Stocker:  Okay. I think the most interesting part of our company is that we are still very interestingly valued in comparison to our direct peers. Pharmacielo has a market cap close to $1 billion; we have a market cap close to $60 million, $70 million CAD. So the potential is really high. I expect that Pharmacielo will do well and multiply its value probably two, three more times, but this is my guess. Here I see a much bigger multiple. We are only a few months away from Pharmacielo.

Ricki Gurwitz: Okay. Well, I want to thank you for coming in, and hopefully we can talk to you again later in 2019.

Patricio Stocker:  I thank you very much for the invitation, and I’m always available to you.

Ricki Gurwitz: Thank you so much.

Patricio Stocker:  Thank you.

Original article: Blueberries Medical Corp (CNSX:BBM) CEO on Joint Venture with Cannava in Argentina

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