B.C. wholesale buyers spent more than 23 times more on booze than on legal cannabis in the quarter up to the end of September
Legal cannabis wholesales in B.C. in the quarter that ended in September grew at the slowest pace in the 10 quarters since the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch started releasing records, according to new data.
The numbers could indicate that the legal cannabis market is maturing and that slower growth could be expected. It may also be more evidence that B.C. consumers are cutting back in their spending. Restaurant sales growth in B.C. is lagging other provinces while alcohol wholesales in B.C. have declined in total dollars spent in each of the past four quarters year-over-year.
Private stores and government stores spent $147,211,721 to buy all forms of cannabis in the three months up to the end of September, up 7.4 per cent from the $137,126,714 purchased in the same quarter one year earlier, according to the BCLDB.
While 7.4-per-cent growth in wholesales may sound impressive, it is tepid growth for cannabis, which became legal in Canada in October 2018.
Go back to the same quarter one year ago. Wholesales in the quarter that ended in September 2023 were up 24.3 per cent, compared with the same three months in 2022, when retail buyers spent $110,290,429 on those products.
The pace of wholesales growth then fell from that 24.3-per-cent rate to 20.5 per cent in the quarter that ended in December 2023 and then to slightly more than 10-per-cent growth in each of the next two quarters (10.3 per cent in the quarter ended in March, and 10.6 per cent in the quarter ended in June).
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