Pharmaceutical manufacturing company GESlabs has become one of Africa’s first cannabis dedicated, Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) approved manufacturing laboratories licensed to export scheduled narcotic extracts.
After two years of negotiations and making safety improvements, the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) has finally issued a licence to GESlabs to manufacture cannabinoid pharmaceutical ingredients for use in therapeutic medicines, the only company in Southern Africa with such a licence.
The small innovating company, which has attracted R20m of foreign direct investment, has been awarded international licences and GMP approvals for its world-class, African-first production site in Cape Town.
The country’s warm climate is suitable for growing high spec medical cannabis through the use of efficient farming and harvesting techniques. However, to date, the continent’s potential has been blocked by lack of access to specialist GMP facilities for growers to turn their cannabinoid biomass into the highest global standard.
Using carefully cultivated biomass, processed through world-class technology, GESlabs will deliver the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for use in prescription medicines and wellness supplements. The ingredients are used to treat different types of illnesses from chronic pain to epilepsy.
“Our lab produces pharmaceutical quality cannabinoids,” said GESlabs co-founder and MD Peter Nel, adding that they use highly efficient extraction using ethanol to extract APIs.
“Our facility can take the different partitions of cannabis and isolate different factions to deliver single molecule ingredients that are optimal for drug discovery.”
The nearly 300m² facility, designed in collaboration with Sahpra, will immediately start production and ship its first samples of APIs to the US, UK, Germany and Australia in February.
Local cannabis growers will also stand to benefit as the cannabis will be locally sourced with stringent quality controls in place.
The investors in GESlabs are mainly from the UK and Germany.
“We are doing a small fundraiser now and a larger expansion in the upcoming financial year and hope then to attract our first pharmaceutical stakeholder,” said GESlabs chair Dave Drew.
The labs were initially ready for operation in January 2020 but were slowed down by the Covid-19 pandemic, giving the project team of local scientists, engineers and builders an opportunity to perfect its buildout phase, according to Nel.
The next phase for the company will be to maintain monitoring and reporting to ensure that quality and safety standards set by Sahpra and the global certification are upheld.
Active ingredients such as opium and coffee have been historically significant in heightening the breadths of modern medicine.
The majority of pharmaceutical cannabinoid products on the market that have been clinically studied and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration are manufactured using the single molecular pathway.
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