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It was incorporated just in January2017, and went public this January through a reverse takeover of a shell company, a mere three weeks before the offer from Aphria.



What Nuuvera appears to have is a set of international relationships in such countries as Italy, Israel and Germany, and a well-connected board of directors and management team hailing from the world of online gaming, tech and pharmaceuticals.

Notably, Nuuvera’s focus is outside the U.S., from which Aphria has been backing away. In February, it began to sell its interest in U.S. cannabis player Liberty Health Sciences Inc., after the TMX Group said it would not permit TSX-listed cannabis companies to operate south of the border.

“The Canadian investor market likes to value cannabis stocks on a basis of funded capacity… (but) this deal is very different from that; this is an opportunity in international markets that are developing,” Aphria CEO Vic Neufeld said on an analyst call in February discussing the deal.

An Aphria spokesperson said no one was available for comment on Friday.

To a degree, Aphria is also buying back its own product in the deal. In August 2017, it agreed to supply Nuuvera with 17,000 kilograms of cannabis annually, as part of a complicated deal that saw Aphria invest $2 million in Nuuvera and agree to sell the company land in Leamington, Ont. It also agreed to help build and run Nuuvera’s greenhouses in return for a payment of $0.10 per gram sold from the facility.