We’re proud to share that Hale Farm was named Innovation of the Year at the 2026 Cannabiz Awards. The awards night was on Tuesday 11 August in Melbourne. It comes a year after we won Cultivator of the Year, and it means a lot to the whole team in Tasmania.
We were in Melbourne for the whole week. From 10 to 12 August we had a booth at the ACannabis conference, where we spent three days meeting doctors, pharmacists and others from the industry. Thank you to everyone who stopped by for a chat.
The award wasn’t for a single product. It was for a decision we made early on about what we grow.
The problem we kept seeing
For years, Australian medicinal cannabis farms have grown mostly THC. Somewhere between 85 and 90 per cent of local cultivation goes to THC-dominant plants. CBD and the minor cannabinoids, like CBG, CBDV, CBC and THCV, get what’s left.
That has real consequences. When a cannabinoid only gets 10 to 15 per cent of a farm’s space, it gets 10 to 15 per cent of its attention too. Supply comes and goes. A doctor starts a patient on something, and three months later it’s gone because the grower needed the room for the next THC crop. You can’t build a treatment plan around something that might not be there next month.
So we flipped it
We didn’t invent these cannabinoids. Nature did. What we did was put them at the centre of the farm.
Today about 70 per cent of what we grow is non-THC: CBD-dominant plants, CBG, CBDV, CBC, THCV and non-intoxicating ratios. We didn’t just add one extra line to a THC range. We built a big part of our operation around them.
That changes how we farm. Our living soil, nutrient ratios and harvest timing are set up for these plants, not as an afterthought. And because they’re most of what we grow, reliable supply isn’t optional for us. Clinics and pharmacies have come to us because we deliver, month after month.
Building what didn’t exist yet
Most systems in the Australian market were set up for THC. Working with the minor cannabinoids meant building a lot ourselves: our own quality and stability testing, and a path through regulatory requirements that hadn’t been written with these cannabinoids in mind. We’ve also made new solventless formats from non-THC plants that weren’t available in Australia before.
Most growers wait until the demand is obvious. We built ahead of it.
Why it matters
We hope it shows other growers that there’s a real case for investing in the minor cannabinoids. The demand is there. And the more patients can access them, the more real-world evidence we’ll all have to learn from.
Thank you to the Cannabiz Awards, to the doctors, clinics and pharmacies who trust us, and to our team in Tasmania, who made it happen.
