Every year, Cannabis Europa brings together the people building one of the most complex industries in Europe, researchers, regulators, clinicians, cultivators, pharmacists, and the executives connecting all of the above.
This year, the Curaleaf team took the opportunity to speak to colleagues from across the company, from cultivation and quality through to legal, finance, and specialist pharmacy, asking everyone the same question: how does your role fit into the journey from science to supply?
What emerged was a picture of an industry that is rigorous, collaborative, and above all, human.
Science first, from the top down
At Curaleaf International, the science to supply chain starts with a clear philosophy.
Juan Martinez, CEO of Curaleaf International, was honest about what has shaped the company’s direction: a recognition that clinical evidence in cannabis is still catching up with patient need.
“It is due to the lack of clinical evidence, that’s why we’re focused on science first,” he said. For Juan, that means building the preclinical evidence base needed to create highly formulated products, ones specifically tailored to the conditions and formulations patients need, rather than generic offerings applied broadly. For example, the UK Medical Cannabis Registry exists to allow for research, attributed to the feedback loop between patient outcomes and driving innovation to product development.
Ilya Gruzdev, who joined Curalaef International as CFO six months ago, reinforced that positioning. For him, “data-backed supply” is the operating principle that matters most, ensuring every product reaching a patient is grounded in clinical input, not just commercial logic. Even as a newcomer to the industry, he was struck immediately by the quality of the people and operation around him, professionals motivated to genuinely improve lives.
Connecting science to supply
Translating that philosophy into operational reality is the work of people like Davor Ivkovic, Curaleaf International’s Head of FP&A. Having watched the industry evolve from its early days in the US through to the development of regulated medical markets across Europe, he described his role as sitting “somewhere between the lab and the demand teams”, working closely with cultivation, production, and commercial teams through a financial lens to ensure the right decisions get made about what ultimately reaches patients.
It is a role that requires constant readiness. Regulations shift by market, commercial conditions change, and the science itself keeps moving. “We always have to be ready and proactive,” he said.
Quality runs through everything
Of course, readiness is only possible when the manufacturing process itself is controlled and intact. Rita Carneiro, Curaleaf’s Head of Quality and Qualified Person in Portugal, oversees two sites: a cultivation facility in Alchochete and an EU GMP-certified manufacturing site in Setúbal. Her responsibility spans the entire production process, from cloning through to final packaging and product release.
“We must make sure that the process is under control,” she explained, “and in the end we have a product that is compliant with the specifications, safe for the patient, and reaches the expected quality.”
What reaches a patient is not simply a harvested plant. It is a product that has been tested, validated, and signed off at every stage of a pharmaceutical-grade manufacturing chain, one that Curaleaf International, has the vertical infrastructure end to end.
The corporate structure
None of this operates without robust legal and financial infrastructure holding it together. Yulia Shylova, Senior Legal Counsel at Curaleaf International, has been with the company for a year and was immediately struck by the complexity she encountered.
“Many people do not realise how much science, regulatory work, and industry compliance are required,” she said. Operating across multiple markets means navigating entirely different regulatory landscapes in each country, a challenge she described as complicated, but genuinely engaging. The legal team’s work sits across the entire chain, ensuring that every stage of the process operates compliantly in every market Curaleaf International operates in.
Supply: from distribution to partners and patients
At the end of the chain are the professionals who translate all of that upstream work into actual patient outcomes. Matty Rawding, one of Curaleaf’s medical cannabis specialist pharmacists, has worked in the industry since 2019 and described having touch points across multiple stages, from early innovation through procurement and all the way to speaking directly with patients about whether their treatment is working.
His biggest surprise? The people. “There’s been so many brilliant minds that I’ve had the opportunity to be exposed to,” he said. “It’s a regulated pharmaceutical industry that people probably don’t realise”, and one that demands genuine expertise at every level.
Sam Strong, a Business Development Manager for Curaleaf Laboratories, works at the interface between the supply chain and the clinical world, training consultants, supporting cannabis clinics, and building the referral pathways that allow healthcare professionals across the UK to direct patients toward the right treatment plan. He is also, he shared, a patient himself. Diagnosed with ADHD and having struggled with sleep for years, his experience since accessing medical cannabis has been straightforward and significant. “I can actually get a good night’s sleep,” he said.
Beyond Curaleaf
Curaleaf Internationals vertical integration means that control over the supply chain runs deep, but it is not limited by partnerships and collaborations with third parties, across the Science to Supply Journey. Some of the most important work happens even before our operations take over, in the hands of trusted cultivation partners like Dalgety.
James Leavesley, Chief Executive of Dalgety, a Home Office and MHRA-licensed cultivator based in the UK Midlands, supplied valuable insight into what science-led cultivation looks like in practice. Growing cannabis as an active pharmaceutical ingredient and supplying it in bulk to Curaleaf Laboratories for finishing and distribution, Dalgety may be trialling 150 different varieties at any one time, running 18-month R&D cycles, and selecting just one or two strains that will ever reach a commercial product.
“You can grow cannabis anywhere in the world” Leavesley said. “But when you’re trying to get the best therapeutic effects out of the plant, there’s a lot of research and a lot that you can do with that.”
It is a fitting note on which to reflect on the whole chain. At every stage, from the cultivator’s grow room to the pharmacist’s consultation, the work is more considered, more scientific, and more patient-focused than the stigma positions the industry.
Science, supply chain and patient outcomes
Speaking to colleagues across the Curaleaf International team, and to the partners who contribute into it, the same themes surfaced repeatedly: the depth of scientific rigour required at every stage, frustration that this is so often misunderstood outside the industry, and a shared conviction that getting the chain right is what makes the difference for the person at the end of it.
That person is a patient. And in an industry still working to earn mainstream credibility, keeping that in focus, from the first clone to the final product, is what the Curaleaf science to supply journey is really about.
