Cantourage Launches Own Cannabis Brand to Protect Margins

Cantourage Group SE has launched its first in-house medical cannabis brand in Germany and, in a bigger shift for how it makes money, started buying flower outright instead of selling other growers’ product on commission. The goal is to protect margin in a market where German wholesale flower prices have fallen sharply.

The Berlin-listed distributor launched gramz. on July 15, 2026, and said its first two production batches sold out to pharmacies across Germany within two days. Cantourage made its name as an importer rather than a grower, so taking ownership of the flower it sells is new ground for the company.

From commission to inventory

For most of its history, Cantourage has run an asset-light model it calls “Fast Track Access.” It imports third-party growers’ flower, handles the German pharmaceutical processing and distribution, and splits the revenue with the cultivator. That structure let the company avoid the cost of building grow sites and the cash tied up in holding stock, a combination it has long pitched to investors as low-risk.

The new brand reverses part of that logic. Rather than share revenue with a supplier, Cantourage buys the raw flower itself, carries the inventory on its own books, and keeps more of the margin on each gram it sells. It is not vertical integration, because the company still does not grow cannabis. It is a move from distributing other people’s product to owning what it sells. It also means Cantourage now carries the risk that flower it has paid for could sit unsold or lose value if prices keep sliding, the exact working-capital exposure its old model was built to avoid.

Owning the purchase widens the pool of growers Cantourage can work with, because it can now buy from cultivators who never wanted a revenue-share arrangement. It also gives the company more control over which genetics, price points and batches carry its own name. gramz. is positioned as value-priced premium flower aimed at self-paying patients, built on the purchasing data Cantourage has gathered across years of pharmacy sales. “Sustainable brands are built when product quality, pricing and brand promise are fully aligned,” said Patrick Malessa, marketing director at the company’s operating subsidiary.

The revenue-share import model gramz. steps away from is common among Germany’s cannabis distributors, so a listed operator moving to own its flower is a test other importers will watch. If carrying inventory lifts Cantourage’s margins without leaving it stuck with unsold stock, the commission model that helped build the German import boom starts to look less attractive.

Why margins are under pressure

Germany is now Europe’s largest medical cannabis market, and that has pulled in a flood of cheap imported flower. Much of it comes from Canada, where licensed producers facing a glutted home market have leaned on exports for relief. German import figures show Canada shipped roughly 93 tonnes of medical cannabis into the country in 2025, close to half of everything Germany brought in that year.

The oversupply has driven pharmacy prices down hard. Industry price data shows flower that routinely sold above €10 per gram in 2023 now sits well below that, with much of the market priced under €8 a gram. For a distributor that earns a share of each gram’s revenue, a falling price shrinks the take, which is the squeeze the new brand is built to answer.

Regulation is the second pressure. In July 2026 Germany removed cannabis flower from statutory health insurance reimbursement, steering more of the market toward patients who pay out of pocket. That turns the self-pay segment gramz. targets into the main arena for flower sales and raises the value of a brand patients recognize and request by name.

The numbers behind the bet

Cantourage is leaning on higher-margin products to lift profitability across the group. In the first quarter of 2026 revenue rose 11% from the prior quarter to €20.6 million, and the company reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of €2.2 million, an EBITDA margin of 10.6%, alongside a net cash position of €8.8 million. All the figures were preliminary and unaudited.

The gains came from what the company describes as streamlining its portfolio toward premium, higher-margin lines, a strategy it says it will keep pushing through the year. The new brand extends that logic from which products Cantourage sells to how it sources them.

The quarter also showed how far the company’s center of gravity has shifted. Germany still produced the largest share of revenue at 51.5%, but the United Kingdom, now a major and fast-growing medical cannabis market, climbed to 41.3%, with Poland making up the remaining 7.3%.

Whether owning the flower beats simply moving it is still unproven. The sold-out first batches are an early demand signal, not evidence of fatter margins. Cantourage says more product launches will follow in the second half of 2026, and its next set of results, the first since gramz. reached pharmacies, will be the earliest hard read on whether taking on inventory risk widens margins enough to justify the change.