Releaf’s Record UK Cannabis Deal Was Only 145 kg

Releaf signed a 145 kg medical cannabis contract with Glass Pharms on 22 October 2024 and called it the largest deal in UK history. The Wiltshire grower lists a phase-one line of 1.5 metric tonnes of dried flower a month, more than ten times that whole contract in a single harvest calendar.

The clinic, based in Nottingham, was months into a public push to swap fragile imports for a British crop. The grower, which files a Surrey office and runs the glasshouse in Wiltshire, was still filling its first commercial rooms. The number on the paperwork was small beside the farm’s own stated output, and that gap is what the next two years actually tested.

A Multimillion-Pound Contract for 145 Kilograms

The 22 October 2024 release, issued for Releaf Dispensary Ltd, described a multimillion-pound contract and did not publish a pound figure. Glass Pharms would supply 145 kg of medical-grade cannabis. Releaf said its doctors were already seeing more than 100 patients a day and that it was on track to become the UK’s largest medical cannabis provider within six months.

It also said its patient list would pass the then-estimated UK sector of 45,000 people within 12 months. Tim Kirby, Releaf’s managing director on that release, put the trophy line on the record.

It’s the largest deal in UK history and underlines the growing recognition of medical cannabis as a legitimate healthcare solution.

Tim Kirby, managing director, Releaf, 22 October 2024 release

That October paper sat on an earlier, quieter deal. On 10 June 2024 the same two firms said UK patients would start receiving first UK-grown medical cannabis cultivars under Releaf’s brand, after medical cannabis became legal to prescribe in November 2018. James Duckenfield, chief executive of Glass Pharms, said patients would now have a security of supply that had been missing from a market that relied on imports, and that a continuous harvest would help end out-of-stock gaps.

The first dispatch was not a Releaf exclusive even then. The opening bulk lot went to a manufacturer for packing and was sent on to clinics that included Releaf, Mamedica and Grow Pharma. Releaf’s October contract bought volume and a headline. It did not buy the farm.

THE PARTNERSHIP CALENDAR

1. 1 November 2018: Specialist doctors in the UK gain the power to prescribe cannabis-based medicines.
2. 2022: Glass Pharms raises £26.5 million to build a purpose-built glasshouse after research grows in Cornwall.
3. 2023: The company completes 16 trial harvests and starts commercial flower in the new rooms.
4. 10 June 2024: Releaf and Glass Pharms announce the first UK-grown flower for patients.
5. 22 October 2024: Releaf announces the 145 kg multimillion-pound contract.
6. 7 August 2025: Glass Pharms announces a supply deal with CB1 Medical and the EcoCann Access range.
7. 15 December 2025: Glass Pharms announces a direct range for Integro Clinic and IPS Pharmacy.
8. 26 February 2026: Glass Pharms says it has shipped its 100th weekly flower order, at 10 times the first bulk batch.
9. 10 April 2026: Releaf says it has crossed 25,000 patients.

Kirby’s “largest deal” line was never independently ranked. It remains the company’s wording, and it is still the figure every later supply notice has to live beside.

Glass Pharms Built a 1.5-Tonne Monthly Line

Glass Pharms calls itself the first UK commercial grower of high-THC flower for cannabis-based products for medicinal use in humans. The site spans 2.4 hectares, about six football pitches, in a remote Wiltshire location the firm keeps off public maps. Robots move plants through climate chambers on a 12 to 16 week path. AI and remote sensors set the rooms. Managing director Richard Lewis spent 38 years in glasshouse horticulture, much of it on tomatoes, before the cannabis build.

The company says the line can turn out 1.5 metric tonnes of dried flower a month in phase one, with room to more than double that in phase two. It also says the glasshouse uses more than 20 percent less energy than older glasshouses and about 40 percent of the power of a typical indoor grow, and that it runs carbon-negative because power and heat come from a co-located food-waste digestion plant, with rainwater captured on the roof. Those are Glass Pharms’ own operating claims, not a regulator’s audit.

THE 145 KG CONTRACT BESIDE THE PIPE

Prohibition Partners, a cannabis market research firm, published those import totals. The 2025 figure is double 2024, after 6,939 kg in 2023. The Releaf contract is under 10 percent of one month of Glass Pharms’ stated phase-one output, and under 1 percent of the 2024 import total. British flower arrived. The import pipe still widened.

The First British Box Went to Chloe Durrington

Chloe Durrington, a Releaf patient treated for endometriosis pain, was named as the first person in the country to receive prescribed flower grown in the UK. The box held about a month’s supply and had travelled roughly 200 miles from the Wiltshire rooms rather than from Spain or Canada. She said it felt better, on environmental grounds, that the medicine had not crossed the globe, and that stock gaps looked less likely if the crop was not coming from overseas.

Her first Releaf consultation cost £99. The flower was £80 for 10 grams. A £40 monthly fee covered pharmacy, delivery and follow-up, and prices more broadly sat between £5 and £13 a gram, in the same band as illicit-market flower at the time. That 10-gram pack is a useful ruler for the later contract: 145 kg is 14,500 packs of that size.

Duckenfield’s pitch was time as much as origin. A harvest could be with patients in six to eight weeks, he and the grow team said, because the rooms plant, prune and cut every day rather than in one big outdoor flush. For a clinic that had been waiting on delayed import lots, that clock was the product.

Releaf’s Bet on Outgrowing the Whole Market

The October 2024 release gave Releaf 12 months to pass 45,000 patients, which would have meant beating the entire UK pool as the company then estimated it. The 12-month mark was 22 October 2025. In a 10 April 2026 results statement, 17 months after the contract announcement, Releaf said it had crossed 25,000 patients.

That is a large private clinic. It is not the whole market, and the market itself had moved. Plantz and Cannavec.ai, in work circulated by the Cannabis Industry Council on 15 May 2026, put the UK at 60,000 to 75,000 active patients by mid-2026. They estimated 75,000 to 90,000 people received a prescription during 2025, and about 95,000 people had been prescribed since November 2018. There is still no official UK-wide patient census; the ranges rest on NHS Business Services Authority dispensing files plus clinician estimates.

Those files show private cannabis items in England rising from 282,920 in 2023 to 659,293 in 2024, more than a doubling. Releaf’s own April 2026 statement put further clinic-level figures on the table, which have not been independently audited.

RELEAF’S APRIL 2026 STATEMENT

• Patient count: The clinic said it had crossed 25,000 patients.
• Prescriptions: It said it had issued over 181,000 prescriptions since launch in February 2024.
• Releaf+ plan: More than 12,500 patients were on the ongoing-care subscription, with more than 59 percent still on it after six months.
• Money: It forecast £9 million for the first quarter of 2026 and an annual run rate of £38 million from March 2026, after about 10 percent month-on-month growth since June 2025.

Over 90 percent of medication sales, the same statement said, went to existing patients. A registered “community” of more than 220,000 people on the same release is a mailing and eligibility pool, not a second patient count. On Trustpilot, Releaf later said it held a 4.8 score from 9,598 reviews as of 12 August 2026. Review volume is not the same as a regulator’s ranking of who is the largest provider.

The Same Farm Now Supplies Rival Clinics

Once the Wiltshire rooms were in weekly production, Glass Pharms sold past the clinic that had bought the first branded lots. The pattern is the second half of the 145 kg story: a grower with spare monthly capacity does not stay a single shop’s farm.

WHERE THE FLOWER WENT NEXT

• June 2024 opening lots: Packed flower also reached Mamedica and Grow Pharma on the first dispatch.
• 7 August 2025: Glass Pharms agreed a range with CB1 Medical, including EcoCann Access products built around sativa, indica and balanced types rather than one-off cultivar names.
• 15 December 2025: The grower announced a supply agreement with Integro Clinic and IPS Pharmacy, with product also listed for Medicann patients and for other UK clinics through IPS.

Tony Dutta, chief executive of IPS Pharma, said the firm was pleased to back a UK-based chain that gave patients surety over continuity, and he pointed to microbial standards met without irradiation, plus balanced and CBG flowers that are hard to fill from imports. Duckenfield said IPS had already been prescribing Glass Pharms-derived products earlier in 2025, which is why the branded range expanded to five new items.

For Releaf, the June 2024 launch still did what a launch is for. It put “Made in Britain” on a Releaf jar first. The October contract then reserved 145 kg of that jar’s contents. Everyone else could still join the queue as the rooms filled.

A Hundred Weekly Crates From Wiltshire

On 26 February 2026 Glass Pharms said the previous Friday it had shipped its 100th weekly order of medical cannabis flower. Two years after the first bulk batch, it said weekly shipments were 10 times that opening volume.

A milestone moment for #GlassPharms 📦

Last Friday, we shipped our 100th weekly order of #medicalcannabis flower.

2 years ago, we shipped our first-ever batch of bulk flower.

Now, our weekly shipments are 10x the volume.

Here’s to the next 100 shipments! 📈 pic.twitter.com/18KstxqZiG

— Glass Pharms® (@GlassPharms) February 26, 2026

That is the operational fact the 2024 trophy release could not yet show: the farm is no longer sending a one-off launch crate. It is sending a weekly crate, and the crate is heavier. The Cannabis Industry Council’s staff walked the same rooms in August 2026 on a member visit, which is the trade body’s way of saying the site is now a regular stop, not a curiosity.

The product argument has not gone quiet just because the volume has. Patients who have received Glass Pharms lots keep returning to the same complaint, that the buds arrive freeze-dried, light, and short on the smell they want from a fresh British cut, and that questions to the grower often sit unanswered. A farm can hit a weekly ship date and still lose the jar-level test that clinics use to keep a cultivar on the menu.

Imports doubling in 2025 sit beside that complaint. Clinics still reach for Spanish, Canadian and other lots when a UK batch is dry, late, or the wrong chemotype. The 145 kg contract locked a slice of Wiltshire output for one fast-growing clinic. It did not close the border, and it did not freeze the grower’s customer list.

Releaf still has the first-patient photograph and the “largest deal” sentence. Glass Pharms has the rooms, the weekly crate count, and a sales book that now runs through IPS, CB1 and the rest. The harvest that was meant to settle supply has instead shown how much spare capacity a 2.4-hectare line holds once the first trophy order is on the truck.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Did the UK Legalise Medical Cannabis?

Specialist doctors have been able to prescribe cannabis-based medicines since 1 November 2018. Almost all of the later growth has been in private unlicensed “specials,” and the Department of Health and Social Care has said it does not routinely collect patient counts for those private prescriptions, which is why researchers publish ranges instead of a single official total.

How Many Clinics Prescribe Medical Cannabis in England?

The Care Quality Commission, in its Safer Management of Controlled Drugs annual update for 2025, identified 39 providers prescribing cannabis-based medicines and said 63 percent of those prescriptions were issued by pharmacists rather than by doctors alone, a split that reflects how private teleclinics now staff the work.

Does Glass Pharms Irradiate Its Medical Cannabis Flower?

IPS Pharma’s Tony Dutta said in the 15 December 2025 supply announcement that Glass Pharms meets microbial standards without irradiation. That is a buyer’s on-the-record description of the lots IPS had already been dispensing, not a published MHRA inspection report.

What Did the First UK-Grown Prescription Cost?

Chloe Durrington’s first Releaf consultation in June 2024 was £99, the flower was £80 for 10 grams, and a £40 monthly fee covered pharmacy, delivery and follow-up appointments, a private-pay path that still sits outside routine NHS cannabis prescribing.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a commercial supply contract and later clinic data. It is informational only and is not medical advice, a recommendation to start or stop any cannabis-based medicine, or investment advice about Releaf, Glass Pharms or any related firm. Anyone considering medical cannabis should speak to a GMC-registered specialist prescriber and, if acting on company financial figures, a qualified financial adviser. Patient counts, import totals, prices and contract statuses are taken from the named statements and research notes as dated above and can change as new dispensing files and company updates appear.