skip to Main Content
Marijuana Is the New Gold for Mining Companies Going to Pot

Turns out, it may be easier to strike gold by growing green.

Just ask Jay Wilgar, a former wind power developer who started a medical marijuana company with friend Travis Kanellos after hatching the idea while lifting weights at a gym. When they began looking at ways to take their startup public, advisers suggested partnering with Newstrike Resources Inc., a Toronto-based firm that had been looking for gold in Ontario and Wyoming without much luck.

“I think they had given up on what they were pursuing from a mining point of view,” Wilgar said by phone. He also wanted to work with “people that understand capital markets, and that was really how the Newstrike transaction came about.”

Newstrike, backed by The Tragically Hip, one of Canada’s most iconic bands, was reborn last year through a reverse takeover by Wilgar’s startup and has since shot higher. While the company has no revenue, it’s valued at C$612 million ($467 million) and became a takeover target itself by rival producer CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. in November.

The number of companies that started in the mining or oil and gas sectors that are now part of Canada’s burgeoning marijuana industry has jumped to more than 40. [Read more at Bloomberg]

This Post Has 0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Stories

Dug In: Big Island Grown’s Deep Cannabis Roots

Big Island Grown (BIG) is a vertically integrated cannabis company based in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii County, on the Big Island of Hawaii, whose reach now extends to several islands in the…

Unlock the Secrets of Social Media for Cannabis Brands

There are three primary ways that brands can use social media platforms for marketing: organic posts, shared posts, and paid posts. With paid posts still off limits to most businesses…

California’s Cannabis Industry Conundrum and the Road Ahead

By Aaron Pelley, Attorney at Harris Sliwoski Despite continuously surpassing every other state with recreational cannabis in terms of total retail sales, California’s cannabis industry has faced continuous and far-reaching…

The High Rate of Dependence Among Medical Cannabis Users

The difference between medicinal and recreational marijuana has always been arbitrary. For example, after legalizing recreational cannabis, California initially required each cultivated seedling to be designated by growers as either…

More Categories

Back To Top
×Close search
Search