Sunderland’s Cannabis Factory Packs an Import-Led Market

Curaleaf’s Sunderland plant, the UK’s largest medical cannabis processing site, packs imported flower for private clinics the NHS still will not fund. The flower is grown abroad, then finished on the Wear and posted to patients who pay themselves.

Since November 2018, specialist doctors have been allowed to prescribe cannabis-based medicines. Almost none of that volume sits on an NHS list. The growth landed in a North East factory that used to make unlicensed “specials” for pharmacies, and in a private teleclinic market that now runs far ahead of the health service.

A River Wear Plant Finishes Someone Else’s Crop

The site sits on an industrial estate by the River Wear. In 2018, 42 people worked there. By November 2024 the headcount was about 200, and by June 2026 Curaleaf Laboratories said it employed over 200 people on site across the lab, quality, commercial and customer teams.

This is not a British grow. Dried flower arrives in bulk, is checked, packed and released as a medicine, then leaves through Curaleaf Pharmacy on the same campus. In November 2024 the company said 200 kilograms a month was landing at Sunderland, and that it was supplying about 16,000 clients, with one in 25 of them living in the region, about 640 people. Chronic pain was the most common reason for a script.

Tabitha Bonallie, then 26 and working in health and safety, had watched the lab fill out in four years. Friends still asked if she got free samples. She said people were “dead interested,” and that “the growth has just been crazy.” Managing director Jonathan Hodgson would not pretend the whole market was easy to size. “All we know for a fact is what we’re producing, and we deliver cannabis to other clinics as well,” he said. “It grows by hundreds and hundreds every month.”

Portugal Grows It, Sunderland Packs It

The filmed production line starts more than 1,000 miles (1,609 km) away near Lisbon. Curaleaf International describes that Portuguese site as the first in the country to hold a medical cannabis cultivation licence, with 25,000 square metres of greenhouse space run to GACP rules before nearby Setúbal processes the crop to EU-GMP. A visit in 2024 counted seven greenhouses holding about 7,500 plants each, with each crop valued at about $4 million (£3.12 million).

Nuno Mendonça, general manager of Iberia for Curaleaf International, treats the houses like a drug plant, not a farm. Industrial LEDs run even in Portuguese sun, because the batch has to match the last one.

The users of the illicit market have no idea what’s behind the product they are purchasing. One of the most important aspects of production is to get consistency.

Nuno Mendonça, General Manager of Iberia, Curaleaf International

Company materials put that same point as consistency as a production requirement, then send the dried flower north. Extraction for oils sits at Medalchemy in Spain, a GMP lab that was the first in that country licensed to make and export cannabis oils. The last step is the MHRA-approved Specials manufacturer in Sunderland, which turns bulk material into products a UK specialist can prescribe.

THE THREE-STOP CHAIN

Parent company Curaleaf thanked the crew that walked that chain, from the Portuguese houses to the Wearside line and on to Curaleaf Clinic patients.

Thanks, @BBCNews and @AdClarko for featuring our cultivation facility in Portugal, our manufacturing facility in Sunderland, and @CuraleafClinic patients in the UK. Since medical cannabis was legalized in the UK in 2018, Curaleaf has significantly expanded patient access to…

— Curaleaf (@Curaleaf_Inc) December 2, 2024

Hodgson’s team also packs for other clinics, which is the quieter half of the model. Foreign growers get a UK-compliant factory and a pharmacy door. Sunderland gets the shift work. The plant in the ground stays overseas.

The NHS Still Writes Almost None of These Scripts

Medical cannabis became legal in the UK in November 2018, after a public fight to get it to children with severe epilepsy. The change let specialist doctors prescribe. It did not put dried flower on a normal NHS pathway.

The Department of Health and Social Care says licensed cannabis-based medicines are funded where there is “clear evidence of their quality, safety, and effectiveness,” and that the NHS takes “an evidence-based approach to unlicensed cannabis-based treatments” before any wider rollout. Unlicensed cannabis-based products have been prescribed on the NHS only to a handful of people. Private clinics took the rest.

NICE, which advises on NHS drugs, tells specialists to weigh each patient, the condition, and the risks “until there is clear evidence of the safety and effectiveness of cannabis-based medicinal products.” That sentence is why a factory on the Wear can run two hundred people and still sit outside ordinary hospital formularies.

WHERE CLINICIANS AND THE NHS DIVERGE

• Prof Mike Barnes: The consultant neurologist says the evidence of benefit is “overwhelming,” while stigma still hangs on the plant.
• NICE and DHSC: Both hold the line that unlicensed cannabis medicines need clearer proof of safety and effect before the NHS rolls them out.

Barnes will not sell miracles. He will not wait for the NHS either.

It’s not a cure-all drug, it’s not a miracle drug, but it’s a remarkably useful drug for a lot of problems.

Prof Mike Barnes, consultant neurologist

Prohibition Partners, the London cannabis research firm, estimated around 100,000 people were being prescribed in 2025 and that more than 140,000 would be prescribed in 2026, almost all through private teleclinics. Cannamonitor’s clinic-traffic split in 2026 put Releaf at 28%, Curaleaf Clinic at 21%, Alternaleaf at 20% and CB1 Medical at 8%. Those are website shares, not script counts, but they show how tight the private front door is.

How 42 Jobs Became More Than 200

The Sunderland operation began as Rokshaw Laboratories, a pharmaceutical specials house founded in 2012 by brothers Jonathan and Richard Hodgson. Specials are unlicensed medicines made for named patients when a licensed product will not do. That licence, and the MHRA quality system behind it, is what Curaleaf bought.

FROM SPECIALS LAB TO CANNABIS PLANT

1. November 2018: Specialist doctors gain the right to prescribe cannabis-based medicines in the UK.
2. 2019: Curaleaf takes the Sunderland site into its European group, keeping the MHRA specials licence.
3. March 2024: The firm, then 187 people with £19 million in turnover, sets a £25,000 minimum starting salary and talks up a move onto Wessington Way. Matt Brown, a Curaleaf manager, said staff could not live on less, with 27 days’ holiday, private medical cover and £800 in quarterly bonuses.
4. February 2024: The medical cannabis division of Rokshaw Ltd begins trading as Curaleaf Laboratories.
5. November 2024: Headcount is about 200. The pharmacy on site is already feeding Curaleaf Clinic and other private prescribers.
6. May 5, 2026: Curaleaf Laboratories says it is the first UK maker of cannabis suppositories and pessaries.
7. June 2026: The company says it employs over 200 people on site, works with Sunderland College and the University of Sunderland, and hits a 99% next-day rate for wholesale and pharmacy orders placed before 2:30pm.

A 4-metre-tall, 11-metre-long automated dispensing robot now sits in the pharmacy. That machine is the tell. The boom on Wearside is throughput: more SKUs, more third-party clinics, more parcels out of SR4.

Wearside Became an Import Gateway for Foreign Flower

The 2024 tour showed Portuguese plants. The 2025 import ledger shows a different map. Prohibition Partners, using Home Office customs records and clinic tracking, found the UK brought in 14,992 kilograms of cannabis-based medicines in 2024 and more than 30,000 kilograms imported in 2025, a recorded 30,061 kilograms, more than double in a year for the second year running.

UK MEDICAL CANNABIS AT A GLANCE

• Imports, 2025: 30,061 kilograms, up from 14,992 kilograms in 2024.
• Patients, 2026: more than 140,000 people estimated on a script, up from about 100,000 in 2025.
• Market, 2026: between £302 million and £389 million, per Prohibition Partners.
• Products: 818 cannabis-based medicines available, up from 374.

Canadian exports to the UK rose from 2.58 tonnes in 2024 to 17.07 tonnes in 2025, a 562% jump. Once flower that is grown in Canada and then routed through European hubs such as Portugal is counted, Prohibition Partners puts Canada at 70% to 80% of what enters Britain. Spain supplied more than half as recently as 2023 and was down to 11% by the end of 2025. UK-grown product was about 14% of 2025 supply, and the firm expects that share to fall because imports are scaling faster than domestic sheds.

That is the second job Sunderland now does. Curaleaf still grows in Portugal and at Northern Green Canada, an EU-GMP indoor site it says can process 25 tons a year. It also runs other people’s flower through the Wearside licence. The factory becomes the expensive bit of entering a medicines market: import, quality, pack, pharmacy. Overseas cultivators do not have to build that stack themselves.

WHAT NOW LEAVES THE SUNDERLAND LINE

• Dried flower: still the main product, vaped by most patients.
• Oils and pastilles: EU-GMP full-spectrum oils, plus pastilles the company says it now supplies as a UK monopoly line.
• Newer forms: liquid vape cartridges, a medical-grade inhaler, and the 2026 suppositories and pessaries built after specialist doctors asked for them.

Alexander Khourdaji, senior analyst at Prohibition Partners and author of the 2026 UK update, has described the market as no longer niche, and said most people have no idea it is happening at this scale. The Sunderland plant is where that scale gets a batch number.

Patients Pay Privately While Street Cannabis Stays Illegal

Denise Clark, 46, moved from Portland, Oregon, to Ulverston in Cumbria. She lives with chronic pain and says she spent five or six years being told doctors could not treat it. Medical cannabis, she said, felt like a secret. “I was surprised at how great it was at managing pain and it felt like that was some sort of secret, like why don’t more people know about this?” She still hears opinions. Her answer is that staying quiet leaves people in pain they do not have to be in.

Benn Goodings, 28, is from Sunderland and used illicit cannabis before a prescription. He takes it for depression and anxiety he has had since he was a teenager. “Sometimes my mind is racing and this brings me to a normal level,” he said. “Now, I’m just a normal guy taking his meds.”

Outside the clinic portal, cannabis is still a Class B drug. Possession can mean up to five years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. The factory’s selling point is the gap between those two facts: a pharmaceutical batch with a known THC figure, against a street bag with no certificate. Mendonça is right that illicit users do not see the lab. He is also describing the business. Patients who want the lab pay clinic fees. Patients who cannot, or will not, stay in a criminal market the 2018 change never closed.

That is why some growers and patients treat licensed manufacturers as gatekeepers. The Wearside model needs import permits, specialist prescribers and a ban on home grow. It does not need the NHS to change its mind, and so far the NHS has not.

Sunderland’s Cannabis Payroll Keeps Growing

Curaleaf was still advertising a six-month medical cannabis production technician post in Sunderland in September 2026, on rotating shifts in cleanroom and non-sterile rooms, with talk of a permanent job for the right person. The work is weighing, packing, records and inspection. It is factory work with a Schedule 2 drug in the room.

Bonallie hoped the boom would be good for Sunderland in jobs and industry. On that narrow test, it has been. A specials lab that employed 42 people now pays over 200, ships nationwide before the next morning, and keeps adding dose forms so other clinics can send it their parcels. The flower in those parcels is still someone else’s crop. The script is still a private bill. The NHS is still waiting for evidence it says it does not have.

On the Wear, the lines rumble anyway. The city got the packing plant. Patients who can pay got a regulated tin. Everyone else is where they were in 2018, except the smell from the industrial estate is harder to ignore.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of the UK medical cannabis market and Curaleaf’s Sunderland manufacturing operation. It is for information only and is not medical advice, a recommendation to start or stop any treatment, or guidance on obtaining cannabis. Cannabis-based medicines in the UK require a prescription from an appropriate specialist, and unlicensed products carry risks that a qualified doctor or pharmacist should discuss with any patient. Possession of cannabis without a valid prescription remains a criminal offence. Figures, job counts, import totals and clinic estimates reflect the company statements, clinic data and research cited here as of the dates given, and those numbers can change as new Home Office, NHS and clinic data appear.