Costa Rica Completes First Medical Marijuana Export to European Union
- Costa Rica completed its first export of pharmaceutical-grade medical marijuana to the European Union, shipped by Hybrida Farms on March 13.
- The export complied with Costa Rica’s marijuana laws, international treaties, and EU import regulations, carried out by Hybrida Farms, the country’s first dual-licensed operator for THC medical marijuana and industrial hemp.
- The shipment involved GACP-certified medical marijuana, meeting strict Good Agricultural and Collection Practice standards essential for serving European medical markets.
- Hybrida Farms converted a former tomato farm in Cartago into a pharmaceutical-grade cultivation facility, creating hundreds of jobs and making significant investments in infrastructure, testing, and workforce training.
Costa Rica has completed its first export of pharmaceutical-grade medical marijuana to the European Union. According to a an announcement made today by Hybrida Farms, the shipment left Costa Rica on March 13.
The company says the export was carried out in compliance with Costa Rica’s marijuana law, its implementing regulations, international treaty requirements and the import rules of the receiving EU member state. The shipment was made by Hybrida Farms, the operating brand of Vantage Point Global CR S.A., which describes itself as Costa Rica’s first and only dual-licensed operator authorized to handle both THC medical marijuana and industrial hemp.
The export is notable not just because it is the first of its kind for Costa Rica, but because it involved GACP-certified medical marijuana bound for the European market. GACP, short for Good Agricultural and Collection Practice, is a standard used for cultivation, harvesting, drying, storage and recordkeeping. For companies looking to serve medical markets in Europe, that type of certification can be a key requirement.
Hybrida says its operation was built out of a former large-scale agricultural site in Cartago that had previously been used to grow tomatoes for export. The company has since converted the property into a pharmaceutical-grade cultivation campus with a mix of greenhouse and indoor production, in-house tissue culture, precision fertigation and third-party testing.
In announcing the shipment, company officials framed it as both a commercial breakthrough and proof that Costa Rica can compete in the global medical marijuana space. The company also said the project has already created hundreds of local jobs and involved millions of dollars in investment tied to infrastructure, vendors and workforce training.
Director of Cultivation Riley Shields said the shipment shows Costa Rica is capable of producing marijuana for European medical markets at a high level, while President Jorge Luis Calderón Chaves said the effort was built around safe, tested medicine and long-term trust in the supply chain.