He thoroughly researched the business climate in North Macedonia, discussed Gold Leaf’s proposed project with the American Embassy in Skopje, and visited foreign companies that had located in North Macedonia and were exporting and selling products outside the country.

 

He chose North Macedonia because:

1.   It is one of only a handful of European countries where it is legal to grow,  distribute, and export medicinal cannabis;  

​2.  It has adopted Canada’s free market approach to cultivation, distribution, and sale, as opposed to setting up a state monopoly, a plus for investors;

3.  It has a favorable climate and conducive growing conditions; and

4.  It has ​low costs for land, labor, electricity, and water, a low corporate tax rate (10%), and does not charge an excise tax on cannabis; thus, its operating costs are extremely low (the operating costs of the Phase 1 facility decline from 16% of net revenues in Year 2 to a little more than 3% of net revenues in subsequent years, based on January 2025 retail prices of medical cannabis in German dispensaries). 

 

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DOES THE COMPANY HAVE A GROWING LICENSE? Gold Leaf Europe received the only growing license approved in 2023 by the North Macedonia Legislature and issued by the the Ministry of Health, which oversees cannabis cultivation, processing, and sale in North Macedonia. The license was activated in January 2024.

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​See the North Macedonia Ministry of Health's decision on December 12, 2023 to issue the growing license, the growing license that was issued to Gold Leaf Europe LLC on December 21, 2023 and the public announcement on January 16, 2024 by the Ministry of Health of issuance of the growing license (all of which are in Macedonian along with their official English translations).

 

​Only two other growing licenses, to the project developers' knowledge, were issued by North Macedonia in 2024.

 

 

WILL IT BE GACP AND GMP CERTIFIED? The project developer is a U.S. construction firm owner and hydroponics greenhouse innovator. The facility has been built in accordance with the Good Agricultural and Collecting Practices (GACP) for medicinal cannabis and the European Union's (EU's) pharmaceutical quality Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standards. Only GMP certified facilities, which must be built at the onset to meet GMP standards, can export cannabis for outside the country.​

 

​Once the facility is ready for operation and its final set of certification inspections are complete, it will operate as a GACP and GMP certified facility -- one of only a handful of GACP and CMP certified growing facilities in North Macedonia -- which will allow it to export to all non-U.S. countries worldwide where medicinal and recreational cannabis are legal, a total of 52 countries with a combined population exceeding 1 billion people. 

 

See Why GMP Certification is Important and the news article about the GMP growing facility in Skopje: North Macedonia Grower Receives Export License (click "I already am a subscriber" if you encounter a pop-up) which also has a North Macedonia growing license and is exporting its products as a result of being GMP certified.

 

 

WHAT IS ITS MARKET? The wholesale price in Europe for high quality cannabis (24% THC or more) ranges from a little less than $2,000 per pound up to two, three, and four times that amount. In  Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Norway, and Greece, wholesale prices are close to $5,000 per pound. In Germany, which legalized the recreational use of cannabis on April 1, 2024, the January 2025 wholesale price for cannabis imported from North Macedonia with 22% THC was $4,800 per pound. This project will produce cannabis with 27.4% THC (see the Laboratory Test Results from its pilot plant cuttings).

 

Germany is the third and most-recent European country to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, following behind Malta and Luxembourg (the country of Georgia also has legalized recreational cannabis use, but it is not a part of the EU).

 

Twenty European countries have legalized the use of medicinal cannabis. Pilot programs in Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia allow the use of recreational cannabis from selected points of sale. Seven countries -- Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, and Estonia -- have decimalized the possession of small amounts of cannabis for "personal use." Several other countries, including the UK, France, and Spain are considering the legalization of recreational cannabis.

 

Demand for both medicinal and recreational cannabis in Europe has been increasingly dramatically and is poised to expand even more within the next few years.

 

 

HOW WILL ITS PRODUCTS BE SOLD? A major pharmaceutical firm has expressed interest in buying Gold Leaf Europe’s entire output, for all four phases, on the condition that cuttings from the commercial operation replicate the test results from the project’s pilot plant. See Laboratory Test Results.  

 

Gold Leaf's growing methods give it a competitive edge. See the two photos above showing the growth comparison between the use of standard growing lights vs. Gold Leaf Europe's advanced technology lights developed by the project developer. The grow lights were tested by a major U.S. grower with plants grown in the same facility under the same conditions at the same time. Gold Leaf Europe's grow lights stimulate greater production.

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Gold Leaf Europe is seeking a commitment for the remaining $1,551,000 to purchase and install the balance of equipment for the Phase 1 facility, place the facility in operation, and cover its first six months of operating costs. 

 

The first earnings will be generated approximately 6 months after the remaining equipment is ordered. The projected returns are shown in Table 6.4-2 below. 

 

Please see the Project Plan and Financial Highlights for more detail. The footnotes at the bottoms of page 21 in the Project Plan and page 6 in the Financial Highlights provide the sources and data that were used to calculatethe financial projections, which you can verify and use to calculate the returns yourself.