Midrand-based cannabis pharmaceuticals and health device manufacturer Cilo Cybin intends to use capital raised during its planned JSE listing to ramp up cannabis product production, as well as enter and grow its health device and analysis business.

Cilo Cybin CEO and president Gabriel Theron tells Engineering News that, since the opening of the company's initial public offering (IPO) on September 9, that is has received significant interest in investment opportunities.

“It has been an interesting journey so far. We have been contacted by a lot of the banks and retail investors. We are [also] getting quite a bit of interest from the public [about how they can] participate.”

The IPO will close on November 4, after which Cilo Cybin will be added the the JSE board on November 14.

Normally, he says, IPO shares start at about R1-million as a minimum investment. “We have done it [at] R1 000 [to make it] inclusive. We want to let everybody to be able to get in.”

After the closing of the IPO, Theron says the company will approach some high-net-worth individuals with an investment proposal.

In terms of production, Cilo Cybin has recently produced “quite a bit of volume” in an effort to bolster its stock holding, thereby enabling the company to focus on converting the semi-finished product into oils and other final products, he says.

Cilo Cybin currently holds three cannabis production licenses, including one of 80 issued nationally for cannabis cultivation; one of three issued nationally for good manufacturing processes of cannabis to be used an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API); and the only good manufacturing process license nationally for converting cannabis products into their final form.

Therefore, Cilo Cybin is permitted to undertake the entire value chain of cannabis product production, from cultivation, API to a final product.

However, a challenge posed to the cannabis market is harm that has been done by certain cannabidiol (CBD) manufactures who have released products into the market with a CBD formulation that is too high. This has resulted in the medication not having the desired effect and consumers developing a reluctance to buy other CBD products.

This means Cilo Cybin has to re-educate the market, a move it chose to undertake by keeping its products away from mainstream distributors. As such, the company’s products are instead marketed as practitioner brans, available through doctors and recommended by word of mouth. “It is a slower growth, but we believe it is more sustainable,” says Theron.

In this regard, he says Cilo Cybin has also experienced a good degree of repetitive buying.

Part of the JSE listing endeavour is to upscale the company’s manufacturing side of the business, as well as to get European Union (EU) accreditation – an EU Good Manufacturing Process accreditation.

Getting entry into the EU market bloc will result of significant interest in Cilo Cybin’s products and enable the company to focus more on increasing production to meet new demand, says Theron.

Scaling up production is dependent on offtake of products, and in this regard, he says the company has modestly forecasted increasing production to 150 kg of oil a month, which requires about 2 t of cannabis flower.

Based on increased offtake, Cilo Cybin intends to phase most of its sales from bulk orders over to finished products. Changing from bulk to instead selling finished products will result in profits increasing about three-fold, says Theron.

Further, transitioning from bulk to final product sales will translate into about 150 000 units of 30 ml bottles a month. Currently, Cilo Cybin is able to produce 100 000 such bottles a month.

In terms of exports, the company is currently doing shipments to Australia, while a shipment to South America was also recently done.

“We are speaking to [offtakers] in India. That will be quite a significant [volume],” he says. For India, Cilo is targeting 50 000 units a month, scaling to 200 000 as soon as demand arises.

However, Europe remains Cilo Cybin’s first export prize, driven by plans to open the bloc’s recreational use of cannabis in 2025/26, says Theron.

Besides the cannabis product side of business, Cilo Cybin also wants to increasingly shift focus into a US-based human genetics analysis company, as well as into its health device company.

In terms of health devices and products, Cilo Cybin has a keen eye on devices that can analyse human brains on both an emotional and physical level, the latter to determine severity of physical impacts, such as a concussion. This device would also be able to determine whether medication is working as intended and any consequences of medication on the brain.

Another item of technology of interest to the company is one to test human’s nervous system, such as factors of inflammation, stress, hormonal levels, mineral levels and brain receptor levels.