Cannacurio: Virginia’s Industrial Hemp Overview

Last week we reported on one of the three license types managed by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS). This regulator handles hemp registrations for all value chain participants including growers, processors and dealers. As with hemp dealers the regulators will report these licenses to the state police and law enforcement.

License Counts

Overall we found 2,299 licenses with cultivation as the most prevalent activity:

This is consistent with what we have seen in other states where cultivator’s make up the majority of licenses. Hemp Cultivators make up 63% of the active hemp licenses in the database so Virginia is not too far from the norm.

Locations

Licenses were registered all across the state – covering most of the 95 counties and independent cities. Here’s the leaderboard for the top 11:

Vertical Integration

As we have reviewed hemp licenses, vertical integration is one factor we think is important. If companies are buying up lots of licenses, that can change the competitive nature of the industry. In Virginia, based on trade names, there does not appear to be too much concentration though many license holders have secured 2, 3 or even 4 licenses:

325 license holders have secured 745 licenses, which is about 32% of the total granted. In Texas we found less concentration with 88% of license holders garnering one license compared to only 68% in Virginia. This is at least somewhat driven by the types of licenses available – Virginia’s set of activities was more traditional than what was offered in Texas as they included a testing license.

Cannabiz Media customers can stay up-to-date on these and other new licenses through our newsletters, alerts, and reports modules. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive these weekly reports delivered to your inbox. Or you can schedule a demo for more information on how to access the Cannabiz Media License Database yourself to dive further into this data.

‍Cannacurio is a weekly column from Cannabiz Media featuring insights from the most comprehensive license data platform. Catch up on Cannacurio posts and podcasts for the latest updates and intel.