Following its first commercial harvest in January, Canada-and-US-based Village Farms says it has now started processing orders and deliveries into the Dutch market from its facility in the Netherlands.

The company will begin cannabis deliveries to Dutch coffeeshops on February 7, 2025.

Village Farms is one of a handful of companies selected, through its wholly-owned Netherlands-based Leli Holland subsidiary, to provide a regulated supply of cannabis to some of the country’s famous coffeeshops. Ten such licenses have been issued.

In December 2023, the first cannabis under this program reached the first approved coffee shop. Leli Holland has also said it plans to build another much larger production facility in nearby Groningen with production beginning as early as 2026.

The Dutch government first announced its plans for the project in 2022, which include looking into a “closed cannabis chain” for cannabis coffee shops in several cities across the country. On April 7, 2025, all coffeeshops in municipalities participating in the program will be required to buy and sell cannabis products solely from regulated license holders.

The goal of the closed-loop experiment is to explore the possibility of a quality-controlled cannabis production and distribution system in the country as an alternative to the current “tolerance policy” that has not-legal-but-tolerated “coffee shop” style points of sale, and unregulated, illicit growers who supply them.

A research paper examines the subject here, and can also be explored in-depth here. Currently, there are around 565 cannabis coffee shops in the country. 

The Leli Holland facility, one of just ten such licensed facilities in the Netherlands, is owned by Village Farms, the parent company of BC cannabis producer Pure Sunfarms. It’s approved for cultivation of up to 2,500 kilograms of cannabis a year. 

“Today’s news marks the culmination of nearly five years of work by our team to commercialize Leli’s operations, and we are thrilled to begin deliveries to Dutch coffeeshops and meet our previously-disclosed timeline to launch of sales,” said Michael DeGiglio, president and CEO of Village Farms International. 

“With a long-established culture of legal cannabis consumption, a zero-tax policy toward regulated products, and a considerably more favorable pricing environment than Canada, the Dutch market represents one of the most attractive cannabis investment opportunities globally. We are confident in our ability to continue executing a profitable international growth strategy, and look forward to continued collaboration with the Dutch government to create a model for success in regulating cannabis internationally.”

Village Farms also exports medical cannabis from its EU GMP-certified facility in Canada to international markets like Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Australia.

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