Canada Cannabis Spot Index (CCSI) 

Published October 23, 2020

ccsi image 1

*The provincial excise taxes vary. Cannabis Benchmarks estimates the population weighted average excise tax for Canada.

**CCSI is inclusive of the estimated Federal & Provincial cannabis excise taxes..

The CCSI was assessed at C$5.92 per gram this week, down 2.0% from last week’s C$6.04 per gram. This week’s price equates to US$2,044 per pound at the current exchange rate.

Include your weekly wholesale transactions in our price assessment by joining our Price Contributor Network

If you have not already done so, we invite you to join our Price Contributor Network, where market participants anonymously submit wholesale transactions to be included in our weekly price assessments. It takes two minutes to join and two minutes to submit each week, and comes with loads of extra data and market intelligence.

This week, Statistics Canada released retail sales data for August 2020. Sales have been increasing steadily across Canada, but sales growth in July and August was substantially higher than expected. August sales settled at C$245M for the month, which is C$12.2M higher than July 2020 and up C$119M year-over-year. The monthly increase is not as large as the gain from June to July, but still very notable. August’s figures point to an annual run rate of C$2.93B for 2020. The prospect of retail sales eclipsing $3B in 2021 is now extremely likely.

As reported last month, the high level of sales looks to be the result of:

  1. Elevated demand during the summer months, 

  2. growth in retail outlets in key provinces, 

  3. higher-value sales opportunities with cannabis 2.0 products, and 

  4. traditional consumers switching to safer and regulated legal channels.

Source: Cannabis Benchmarks, Statistics Canada

On an average daily basis, August sales were higher across every province. While average daily sales nationwide expanded by 5.2%, increases varied significantly at the provincial level. Of the major provinces, Ontario led the way with a 10.5% rise in average daily sales and the Maritime provinces saw an increase of 8.1%. 

Cannabis Benchmarks estimates that a total of 22,141 kg of dry cannabis was sold in August. This is approximately 1,169 kg more than July. The majority of that product was sold in Ontario, followed by Alberta.

Source: Cannabis Benchmarks, AGCO

For more data and analytics like this, subscribe to the Cannabis Market Insights report developed in collaboration Nasdaq. This in-depth monthly report provides exclusive data and analysis on the legal cannabis industry, focusing largely on the Canadian cannabis market, as well as the cannabis equities market in the U.S.