Missouri Marijuana top $350 million during first 3 months
Hippos Cannabis has a 40,000-square-foot production facility in Vienna, Missouri, a town of 600 people that’s just 30 minutes north of Rolla.
Since Missouri’s recreational marijuana sales began in February, it has added 25 workers, bringing total employees to 70.
“A lot of the employees were born and raised and went to high school in Vienna, and now they’re all working together,” said Nicholas Rinella, CEO of Hippos, which also includes three dispensaries elsewhere in Missouri. “So it’s a real community at the facility.”
Like other companies, Hippos is working on expanding its facility, where it largely makes jarred cannabis flower buds and pre-rolled joints, in order to ramp up production and keep marijuana dispensary shelves stocked.
“We didn’t know if Amendment 3 was going to pass,” Rinella said. “Once it did pass, what the industry had expected was a 2.5 times bump in sales. It ended up being closer to five to six times.”
Missouri’s recreational marijuana sales came in at $91 million for April, according to a report the state released Friday. That’s up from February’s $71.7 million and on par with March’s $93.5 million — for a total of $256 million in the first three months.
Adding in medical marijuana sales, Missouri hit $350 million in the first three months since the state has been able to sell recreational marijuana.
Strong sales numbers
Yet cannabis business owners say those numbers could be even higher because cultivators and manufacturers like Hippos aren’t working at their maximum capacity.
It could take up to a year to see what Missouri sales are capable of, said Tyler Hannegan, co-owner and chief of operations and sales at Robust Cannabis.
That’s partially because anytime a cannabis business makes changes to its facility, it must get approval from the state regulating agency, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
Since February, DHSS has received more than 80 requests for facility changes, adding to the 40 it already had pending, said department spokeswoman Lisa Cox.
“I don’t think we’ve seen peak numbers yet at all,” Hannegan said of Missouri sales, “just because there’s still cultivation groups that haven’t come online. They’ve just expanded, but they haven’t even been approved.”
Still, Missouri’s market has been among the quickest to rise nationwide.
For Illinois, it took seven months to hit $300 million after beginning adult-use sales in January 2020, with its first year ending at $670 million. Two years later, Illinois ended 2022 at $1.6 billion.
While Missouri is not matching Illinois’ April numbers of $132 million, it is still poised to hit over a billion in its first year.
A year ago, Robust Cannabis had six employees when it opened its 75,000-square-foot greenhouse and manufacturing site in Cuba, Missouri, which is an hour south of St. Louis. Now it has 70 workers, who live and often grew up nearby.
The company began tripling its production in January, and it has hired about 40 people in the past three months alone.
But it’s still not meeting the state’s incredible demand, said Emily Braun, director of operations and human resources of Robust Cannabis.
“I don’t even think anybody could anticipate that Missouri would be such flower fiends,” said Braun, referring to cannabis flower buds and pre-rolled joints. “Nobody can keep it on the shelves.”
Turnaround time
Missouri began recreational marijuana sales three months after voters approved the constitutional amendment to legalize it in November.
That was the second fastest turnaround in the country, just two weeks behind Arizona’s record, according to a report by Brightfield Group cannabis analysis firm in Chicago.
However, now several businesses are needing to expand to keep up with demand, and they can run into some delays there.
Companies must get their construction plans approved and then get inspected after the work is complete.
“Processing time for these requests under the new rules is dependent on how quickly a facility can implement the changes for which they are seeking approval,” Cox said, “as they may begin construction after making a request. But DHSS can only approve the request once the expansion is ready for inspection.”
Of the total 121 requests DHSS had pending in February, 39 were for cultivation facilities, 38 were dispensaries, 36 were manufacturing sites, seven were transportation and one was for a testing facility.
Of those, 23 have been approved and are ready to go. Cox said 29 are in final review after inspection and should be approved over the course of the next two weeks.
Five are constructed and scheduled for inspection, and DHSS is waiting on 64 to complete construction so that it can conduct an inspection and approve those spaces.
Like the cannabis companies themselves, DHSS is also hiring new employees to keep pace with the growing market.
“DHSS is in the process of hiring a large amount of new staff to handle the increase in workload associated with the new law,” Cox said. “The Division of Cannabis Regulation is about 30% through their hiring plan and expect to be fully staffed by the end of the year.”
