With ever more retail stores coming online in Alberta, market data firms are finally starting to collect reliable point-of-sale information. This morning, leading cannabis data firm Headset Inc., which partnered with Nielsen and Deloitte in March, released its first numbers from Alberta.
The data was collected between March and May.
Category market share in Alberta
Pre-rolled joints are proving surprisingly popular in the province, although straight flower products, particularly 3.5-gram packages, continue to make up the majority of sales.
- From March to May of this year, 73.3 per cent of legal cannabis spending in Alberta was on flower products.
- 18 per cent of cannabis spending was on pre-rolls. By contrast, pre-rolls only account for around 10 per cent of the market in U.S. states monitored by Headset.
- Oil and gel capsules made up 4.5 per cent and 4 per cent of the market, respectively.
“We expect the market share of categories to drastically shift later this year when new formats are introduced to the Canadian marketplace,” Headset said.
Average price per gram for flower
Total monthly spending in the entire adult-use market in Alberta was $17.5-million in May.
- The average price per gram for flower products in the province was $11.57.
- That price per gram is close to pricing reported in California, where the average price per gram, taking exchange rates into account, is $11.49.
- In more mature markets such as Colorado and Washington, the average price per gram is significantly lower, with $4.51 in Colorado and $5.37 in Washington.
“Higher prices come as no surprise given the reports of supply issues we have heard of in Canada. Most markets in the U.S. saw price compression happen relatively quickly after the adult-use markets legalized and we expect this will begin to happen in Canada by 2020,” Headset said.
Flower sales by package size
Within the Alberta flower market, 3.5-gram containers were the best-selling products, both in terms of unit sales and overall sales.
- 3.5-gram containers accounted for 65.9 per cent of total units sold and 82.4 per cent of total flower revenue.
- 1-gram packages made up 31.5 per cent of total unit sales, but only brought in 11.5 per cent of total revenues.
- 7-gram containers made up 2.2 per cent of unit sales and 5.3 per cent of revenues.
Larger packages (either 15 or 30 grams) accounted for only 0.3 per cent of unit sales and 0.5 per cent of revenue.
Mark Rendell