Ontario sold 35,100,000 grams of cannabis from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020, for a total of $385,100,000 in sales, according to a new yearly report released today.
7,200,000 of those grams were sold on the Ontario Cannabis store’s online portal, while another 27,900,000 grams were sold in brick-and-mortar retail stores. $71,400,000 of those sales were from the OCS.ca while another $313,700,000 was sold in 53 different private retail stores.
Products available for sale grew by over 70% in that first full year of retail sales, with total sales capturing about 19% of the total market demand.
Sales of dried flower made up about 79% of sales by volume, and also made up the majority of products available. Of those dried flower products sold, 52% were over 20% THC, which many provinces have established as “high quality”.
Despite this metric, the OCS’s report says that as “larger-format mids” at lower price points became available earlier this year, they showed robust sales.
Sales of dried flower was $47,300,000 for purchases on the OCS.ca, (5,500,000 g) and $227,600,000 for retail stores (22,300,000 g).
Oils made up the second highest dollar total in sales with $9,500,000 for purchases on the OCS.ca and $16,800,000 for retail stores. Pre rolls accounted for $3,300,000 and $39,300,000, respectively.
Dried flower, oils and pre rolls have been available for sale since Oct 2018, while newer products like vape pens, edibles, topicals, and extracts have only become available for sale for less than a year.
Ontario, despite being the most populated province in Canada, had no retail stores at all for the first six months of legalization, with only a small handful opening in April of 2019. Although the province has now begun increasing their retail store allocations, the first year includes only 53 different private retail stores, arguably hampering sales significantly in a province with about 15 million of Canada’s 38 million residents.
The OCS says their wholesale pricing to authorized retail stores is set at a fixed 25% markdown
from OCS.ca prices before taxes to “ensure a transparent and level playing field”. The average price for a gram of dried flower in Q4 was $7.48 in the OCS.ca online stores, compared to $9.61 in private retail stores.
Using data from Weedmaps, OCS says the illegal market price for a gram of dried flower from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2020 was about $8.23, $8.56 at OCS.ca and $10.84 at legal private retailers.
More information is available here.
