Zoetic International plc (LON:ZOE) Co-Chief Executive Officer Trevor Taylor caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their partnership with GVB Biopharma, termination of the lease on its Colorado greenhouse facility, new agreement with a European cultivation partner and the focus for the company.
Q1: Trevor, you’ve announced an update on Zoetic International’s hemp seed activities. Firstly explain can you the partnership with GVB Biopharma and what it is looking to achieve there?
A1: So, GBV Biopharma is one of the leading hemp farmers and isolates provider here in the US, they’ve really done some great work in the last couple of years, we’ve been following them for a while. We had the opportunity to team up with them on a couple of sides:
One thing we’re able to do is get about 40,000 of our seeds over to them to start doing a full scale outdoor testing programme, this will give us all the necessary feedback needed to validate all of our seeds and their performance in live field testing. We’ve been under quite a few university testing and this was just the full scale test so we’re thankful for that.
Also, what it’s allowing us to do is have the ability to use our same genetics, have them grow it out and then purchase back the isolate at a later date as it’s being produced.
So, long term wise, it’s a great move for us, it helps build up our genetic programme, it’s also the beginning steps of what we believe is going to be a very long partnership with them ensuring up our isolate demand. Really a win-win all the way around and we’re just super thankful and couldn’t be any more happy to be partnered with GVB Biopharma.
Q2: You’ve also announced the termination of the lease on your Colorado greenhouse facility and an agreement with a European cultivation partner. Can you just explain the reasoning behind this and what it means for the company’s hemp production going forward?
A2: It’s a continuation of our desire to be a global provider in the marketplace, we have an opportunity to start working on our partnership overseas to be able to get our seeds certified on a more global aspect. The partnership also allows us to see into the European market a little bit better and more efficiently and it’s just the right time to start making the strategic moves. Letting go of our existing Colorado operation has served us really well, it’s been a great start for the company but it’s just time to start transitioning forward.
Q3: Have these changes altered the focus of Zoetic International in any way?
A3: It really hasn’t. It’s just allowing us to be more efficient, our operation in Colorado was quite expensive to operate on and this new partnership will allow us to be more efficient with our cash use and just manage all of our capital as we go forward.
As I said, it just opens up a bigger market for us, we believe very strongly that as the testing results come back from what we’re doing with GVB and the continued testing at the universities will really true up our genetic face.
One of the things we’ve decided to do is to make sure that everything that we’re offer in the marketplace has been properly tested and has gone through all the right channels. There’s been numerous lawsuits with companies here in the USD that haver rushed to the market and didn’t go through these necessary steps and unfortunately weren’t able to prove up the validity of their genetics.
These moves that we’re making, although they’re cautious, are the right steps to make sure that everything in the marketplace has been tested properly and has plenty of validation as we move forward.
So, all the right steps, all the right moves for us, just as we tend to be, just making sure that we’re overly cautious, managing our cash properly and getting set up for what we believe is going to be a very bright future.
