After months of concerned speculation around Canada’s incredible bloat of unpackaged cannabis inventory, Statistics Canada data shows that the metaphorical pile of cannabis is beginning to shrink.
Dried Cannabis
Newly released data for December 2020 shows that while provincial inventory has increased, likely in preparation for the gift-giving season, most other categories of inventory have decreased, although not by much. December saw a 0.8% decrease in unpackaged inventory and 3.6% fewer packaged units were created during that time, but over 1 million kilograms still wait to be packaged up. Federal stockpiles decreased as well, by 4.9%, however, federal license holders still hold over 15 million packaged units and provincial retailers have just over $14 million, leaving 29.4 million units available for sale.
Edibles and Extracts
While the bloat in Cannabis 2.0 categories isn’t as bad, inventory numbers continue to rise for edibles, extracts, and topicals. Comparably, just over 15 million packaged units of edibles are waiting to be sold, as well as 11.5 million packaged units of extracts, and 123,793 topicals.
In each of these categories, packaged production each month is somewhat inconsistent, however, units sold tend to increase, now making up around 40% of units sold.
The major changes come on the production side. Unpackaged production decreased 41.8% in December, followed by a 25% drop the month before. Are these dips due to Canada’s growing season, or are producers reacting to the inventory bloat and cutting back their crops? Either way, it will take more than a few months of half-time production to solve this issue.
Cannabis Packaged Inventory December 2020 (Packaged Units)
Dried Cannabis: 29,474,280
Edibles: 15,244,575
Cannabis Extracts: 11,547,232
Cannabis Topicals: 123,793
Unpackaged Production & Inventory
Dried Cannabis Unpackaged Production: 96,009 kg
Dried Cannabis Unpackaged Inventory: 1,029,923 kg