Aurora Cannabis Inc (TSE:ACB) (OTCQB:ACBFF) (FRA:21P) has upped the ante again with arch-rivals Canopy Growth Corp (TSE:WEED) (OTCMKTS:TWMJF) (FRA:11L1) and Aphria Inc (TSE:APH) (OTCMKTS:APHQF) (FRA:10E) by announcing the company’s (and the industry’s) first ever export to Italy. The company made the announcement that it had successfully made the shipment through Pendianos GmbH, its wholly owned German subsidiary.

Listen to Aphria CEO Vic Neufeld discussing his company’s strategy for International growth including Europe through their acquisition of Nuuvera.

“The Italian government has entrusted Aurora as the only direct, foreign non-government supplier to the Department of Defense in response to its first ever public tender to help support the growing demand on its strictly-regulated medical cannabis program,” said Terry Booth, CEO.

“The amount of growth that’s going on internationally demands that you have a war chest. And you know, I was talking, just the presentation this morning where every quarter I’d say we’ll be cash flow positive, I would think we’ll be. But it’s not because we’re losing money, it’s because we’re spending money, and we’re spending money on that growth. If they keep coming at us as fast as they have with the international opportunities, like Germany and Denmark and Colombia and Uruguay, well, then, we’re going to have to deploy,” he said in an interview late last year.

Italy has been moving forward with adult use marijuana legislation for recreational purposes since an investigation by the University of Bologna determined through a study of crime rates in areas along the border between Oregon and Washington that crime rates fell in the State of Washington relative to the State of Oregon after marijuana became legal in Washington State in 2012.

Both Aphria and Canopy Growth are also very focused on agglomerating market share throughout Europe (and Italy specifically) and have issued various statements in the last year supporting that perception.

Vic Neufeld, CEO of Aphria, recently commented as a guest on Midas Letter LIVE where he indicated the company’s recent acquistion of Nuuvera was designed to drive the company’s international strategy forward in such a way that it would leave Aphria free to concentrate on the domestic market in Canada. After the acquisition, the name of Nuuvera was changed to Aphria International Inc. to cement that perception.

“Nuuvera was ahead of the curve in terms of scoping out strategic countries, and what they’ve lined up in terms . of non-biding letters of intent, we now taking over and trying to move them across the line to make them binding LOI’s,” he said.

Canopy Growth has been building out its international strategy consistently too over the last year, and is active in Europe as well. According to CEO Bruce Linton, “We were the first ones to export to Germany; we’ve been working, it’s going to be two years this July. So the first Canadian, second in the world company to do that. And we’ve been investing before that for two years. So I think what you’re going to find is, the difference in the market is about 10x the size of the market of Canada. That’s because we have 35 million people; they have about 360 million people through most of Europe. And I think if you said well, if Germany, Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Demmark, clunk clunk clunk, if they all say that it’s on, and Poland, etcetera etcetera, I think you basically can include at a Federal level over some reasonable time frame, every country in Europe.”

Bruce Linton, CEO and founder of Canopy Growth Corp – the world’s largest cannabis company, and the first publicly ACMPR-licensed public company in Canada – lays out the strategy that Canopy envisions for global domination of the world’s cannabis industry.

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