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<![CDATA[Rounding out the 2020 M&A season, Columbia Care closed its acquisition of Project Cannabis—a vertically integrated business based in California. The transaction comprises $52.5 million in Columbia Care stock and another $16.5 million that’s expected to come from the sale of Project Cannabis’s real estate assets.Jonathan Storper, an attorney who represented Project Cannabis in the deal, says that the California side of this transaction is indicative of not only the strength of that state’s cannabis market but the sway it holds for larger operators. While Columbia Care listed a San Diego dispensary and a manufacturing facility among its U.S. portfolio, the Project Cannabis close is a significant step into the California landscape.READ MORE: 10 Notable M&A Deals That Happened (and Didn’t) in 2020 “National organizations are looking to expand and roll up throughout the United States and get efficiencies of scale,” he says. “And I think to the extent that folks don’t already have a foothold in California, they realize it’s really necessary.”Project Cannabis, as a business, includes four dispensaries and a 36,000-sq.-ft. cultivation facility. Plus, the company’s wholesale distribution network is plugged into more than 100 dispensaries across the state. From the jump, Project Cannabis will integrate Columbia Care’s medically-focused and new adult use product lines into its offerings in California.It’s an example of a smaller company positioning itself in a way that’s attractive to larger multi-state operators like Columbia Care. There’s a footprint on the ground already—and room to expand. “I think, fundamentally, [Project Cannabis] created a very, very nice, vertically integrated company and a well-known brand,” Storper says. “They focused on the fundamentals of creating a well run company and brand, both in terms of growing a well heeled crop and creating well respected brands and locating in geographic markets that are advantageous—throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco. Staying…

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Source : Columbia Care Acquires California's Project Cannabis

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