Any forecast about CBD supplement markets in Europe is inevitably going to be prefixed by a very large ‘If…’. Some, such as the EIHA’s Romanese, believe the CBD and wider hemp industry has already been damaged, and will remain severely impaired unless Europe’s regulatory inconsistencies and uncertainties are addressed urgently. But even Romanese concedes that if the right “positive regulation for hemp and its derived products” is finally adopted at EU level, that could change. “All the current policy issues we are facing will be solved, and the necessary investments to relaunch an EU supply chain will flow.” Reeves, for his part, believes that regulatory clarity combined with new formats and consumption opportunities could herald rapid growth in the sector. “I’d say it’s on the cusp of exponential growth, maybe of 20% CAGR or more,” he predicts. Where some see only barriers, Reeves sees the cracks appearing and widening. “The signs are, those barriers are going to crumble,” he says. “We see a very bright outlook, with a lot of innovation and increased sophistication in the category, and with a lot more research to complement that innovation,” says OBX’s Brown. CBD-Intel will not make forecasts beyond five years, but predicts that the involvement of major ‘traditional’ retailers could cause CBD markets to double even by then. But on one level at least, this growth might be offset by constraints over the same period. “The European CBD market will likely experience a period of severe contraction in terms of the number of brands available, as Novel Food applications are eventually approved and enforcement comes in,” Dawson speculates. Overall, the fortunes of European hemp crops, phytocannabinoids and full-spectrum CBD are clearly intertwined, and Prohibition Partners confidently predicts that the approximately 40,000 hectares of hemp planted on the continent in 2020 will by 2030 have expanded to some 100,000 hectares.
Hemp’s carbon-neutral credentials and multi-layered utility as a crop are mirrored in the real and varied benefits deriving from the very top of the plant. There are synergies here which seem set to help drive shared and mutually supportive growth.
THC will be the main driver of innovation in 2022 but what will happen to ingestibles and biosynthetics?