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Coffee and medicinal cannabis, the perfect duo.

The company temporarily modified its raw materials to achieve a product that complies with existing regulations, under international quality standards.
Hierbabuena Magazine – Informational System

Pereira, January 25, 2023 – Café Sativa S.A.S., the Colombian company dedicated to the cultivation and production of premium coffee with CBD, has received the health registration to commercialize the first food product with cannabis in Colombia.

As stated by the National Institute for Food and Drug Surveillance, Invima, in order to access registration temporarily, the product is registered as food with cannabis, but it cannot have detectable CBD and must be below the established THC limit, which corresponds to 0.2%.

“For legal reasons, we had to make the change to access registration, but this already gives us the advantage of being able to have the product commercially available in all retail outlets, including chain stores,” informed Nicolas Ruiz, general manager of Café Sativa, to Hierbabuena Magazine.

According to the entrepreneur, the company temporarily modified the cannabis extract used as raw material so that its final product complies with the permitted THC index and undetectable CBD, according to existing regulations.


“At the moment when Invima issues the new regulation that allows the inclusion of CBD, we will also be the first to obtain this registration since it would only involve an extension of the current registration to include CBD,” Ruiz added.


Sativa Coffee is produced to the standards of export-type coffee, using the Castillo variety, where only beans that pass through mesh sizes 17 and 18 are selected, known as excelso beans, typically marketed abroad.


Regarding the infusion with cannabis, the company employs a technology that allows them to do it directly in the bean, both in pre-roasting and post-roasting, through an infusion process.


“We infuse it directly into the bean and not when it is ground… Most companies that develop this type of product do so from CBD isolates in high concentrations, whereas we do it directly with full spectrum extract to preserve the terpenes, flavonoids, and the entourage effect produced by the sum of all cannabis compounds,” emphasized the executive.


The agricultural company dedicated to coffee and cannabis cultivation in the Colombian coffee region has been working for over two years on the phytogenetic improvement of its cannabis genotypes, achieving the stabilization of a variety with the desired profiles and characteristics, enhancing the body, flavor, and aroma of Café Sativa.


“It’s a variety with a high CBD content, 17.6% CBD and 0.6% THC, with a predominance of 70% to 80% sativa, making it a large-scale plant with good production and very citrusy and fruity terpenes that complement the coffee infusion very well,” Ruiz pointed out.


Moreover, he highlighted that producing their own coffee and cannabis allows them to guarantee process standardization, product quality, and traceability of their entire production process, so that if one buys Café Sativa today, it will be the same as the next purchase.


In that sense, the professional barista, co-founder, and product quality control manager, Freddy Zapata, emphasized that not all coffees are suitable for blending with cannabis extracts, making the product’s formulation and standardization process unique in Colombia and the world.


“Sativa Coffee is a purposeful coffee that the company began developing in 2020; it took us around eight months to stabilize our product because achieving the quality standards sought by the company was complex during development,” Zapata said to this media outlet.


The Colombian company has its operation distributed in two of the departments with the highest coffee production in the country, Caldas and Risaralda. Firstly, the properly licensed cannabis cultivation located in Arabia, Risaralda, a municipality near the departmental capital, Pereira, where its main office is also located, while the coffee-producing farm is located in Palestina, Caldas, at an altitude of 1,650 meters above sea level, and the roasting and processing laboratories in Chinchina, Caldas.


Currently, the company is negotiating with chain stores that were awaiting Invima’s authorization and with the e-commerce platform, Mercado Libre, which expects to dispatch the product from its warehouse in Bogotá.


“We are also on the verge of completing a scientific research project that we are developing to register the product with the European Union and implement a deal we signed last year with a company that will buy a significant amount of Café Sativa for marketing in Europe and then worldwide,” added the company’s general manager.


Finally, he reported that the opening of the first Sativa Coffee retail point in the capital of Risaralda is projected for the second half of 2023, with subsequent plans to expand their presence nationally and internationally.

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