Zoë Reece, the engineer-turned-entrepreneur behind Ora Pharm
When Zoë Reece completed her Engineering degree, she never imagined that she would one day be using those skills to establish and lead an innovative New Zealand company specialising in medicinal cannabis products, called Ora Pharm.
Zoë’s story is one of both hard work and good luck, a journey with decisions made at pivotal points where potential paths diverged, and a healthy dose of transformative thinking along the way.
“A lot of my life and career has been ‘right place, right time’,” she says, recalling her early years of study and her first industry roles.
“I graduated high school in Wellington then moved to Auckland to study civil structural engineering. Following that, I took a graduate job in Brisbane in the technical department for building supplies company Holcim. I soon transferred to Perth, where I met my husband, Karl, who also worked at Holcim.”
Zoë went on to flex her engineering muscles in several roles in Perth, including overseeing large-scale projects for a land development company and later the West Australian Government’s Department of Education.
“Karl and I decided that we didn’t want to settle down in Perth, so we bought a one-way ticket around the world with the plan to find work along the way,” she says.
The couple’s global travels eventually took them through Boston, Massachusetts, where on arrival Holcim surprised Karl with the offer of a full-time job in that city.
“We decided to stay in Boston and take advantage of that opportunity, but I needed a job too. I applied and interviewed for two roles and was offered both. One was a project manager on the new science and engineering building at Harvard University, and the other one was Director of Engineering with a medicinal cannabis startup company, called Curaleaf.”
Zoë acknowledges that while she had initial reservations about the Curaleaf role due to public stigma about the burgeoning cannabis industry, the fact that the newly legalised and regulated product was helping people find relief from pain and other ailments was both intriguing and appealing.
So, she took the job and launched the next unexpected stage of her career, which became a transformative and foundational experience.
“The role was incredible. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity where I wasn’t taking over the role from someone else but building a new one for myself,” she says.
When she started, Curaleaf had 16 facilities with over 200 staff operating in six US states with an annual turnover of US$20m. Less than two years later, Zoë had taken the company to 83 operational facilities in 16 states, with dozens more facilities at the licensing, design or construction stage. There were over 3,500 employees and the facilities she built were responsible for over US$700m in revenue.
But success for Curaleaf was not the only thing Zoë was growing. While honing her entrepreneurial nous and gaining crucial industry experience, a big idea was sprouting in her mind.
“As well as engineering, I got to work with every department at Curaleaf, from the cultivation and processing teams to the R&D and product development team, the marketing team, business development finance and HR.”
In other words – all the knowledge one might need for founding one’s own company.
Additionally, over time Zoë’s personal thinking around medicinal cannabis had shifted significantly. This came from personally meeting medicinal cannabis patients and hearing their stories about how it had changed their lives.
“A very common story I heard was from people who had undiagnosed conditions, and how the legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use had opened up conversations with their doctors about why they used cannabis and how it helped them,” she says.
“These people had either struggled on for years, possibly taking medicinal cannabis incorrectly to manage their condition, or not managing it well within prescribed cannabis. They could now get a proper diagnosis with the correct medication and dosage for what they were dealing with.”
“Medicinal cannabis is not a silver bullet. We need more studies to know exactly how it works and helps to manage different conditions. What we do know is that it helps to manage lots of symptoms associated with many different conditions which allows them to regain control, quality and dignity in their lives.”
Reece’s own personal health journey also influenced her interest in the potential of medicinal cannabis, having lived with painful endometriosis for many years that was effectively treated with a CBD tincture.
“I had some Curaleaf sample products at home with me during an endo flare-up – which would usually put me in bed for a few days – so I gave the CBD a go, thinking nothing would happen. Ten minutes later, I was up and about and exercising as my pain had just melted away. And it didn’t feel like I’d had an opioid where you get that fuzzy head feeling.”
This personal glimpse into the effectiveness of cannabis was another light-bulb moment for Zoë, recognizing that it did not have to be used just for managing severe medical conditions, but could be formulated into various products for everyday use.
The idea for the company that would eventually become Ora Pharm was ready to become a reality.
With their US visas expiring in 2019, Zoë and Karl made the decision to move back to New Zealand and dive head-first into the medicinal cannabis industry here.
“At that time, New Zealand had a new government which announced the introduction of new medicinal cannabis regulations, so the time was ripe to return home to start up Ora Pharm,” says Zoë.
The couple quickly found the perfect location for a greenhouse premises in North Waikato and began capital raising just as New Zealand went into the first COVID lockdown. They kept their operational model small and lean, hiring carefully while also securing some industry heavyweights as key advisers, including Stuart Wilcox, former COO of Curaleaf, who is now the chair of the Ora Pharm board.
“Stuart has been very supportive of everything we’re doing and how we’re building up. He comes from a deep involvement in the food growing and manufacturing industries and has been involved at the operations level of several such companies as they went from private to public and scaled up.”
Zoë also recruited Blake Smith, a US scientist with a background in pharmacokinetics, as Chief Science Officer responsible for designing different delivery methods for their cannabis extracts.
“Blake is another who got into the industry due to having a close family member with a medical condition. While researching treatments, the thing that kept popping up for him was medicinal cannabis. He’s since designed an efficient formulation of a product using minor cannabinoids for Ora Pharm, which helped manage that condition for his family member, changing their lives and others.”
Despite the pandemic, and with her voluminous engineering experience and breadth of knowledge from working in the US, Zoë was able to manage all the licensing requirements, the design of their first greenhouse and getting Ora Pharm operational. They received their first licence in January 2021 and have since been developing a range of everyday use products and putting them through clinical trials.
“I believe in cannabis as a medicine. I know it works, because it worked for me. I also believe that some of the formulations and products that we’re working on right now will become the gold standard in medicine and the norm for prescribing before oxycodone or as the first option for managing arthritis and inflammation,” says Zoë.
“This is a giant global market. It’s only going to get bigger, and New Zealand needs to be a part of it. Once our clinical trials are completed, we will then be able to cut through some more of the ongoing noise around the stigma of cannabis, which will be hugely interesting and exciting.”
Ora Pharm has also received a Callaghan Innovation grant, which has allowed them to upscale development of their own cannabis nutrient formulations.
“That has given us more control over how the plants are growing and adapting them to different conditions. It also meant we’ve been able to reduce our cost of nutrients and fertiliser by 93%.”
Today, after five years in business, Zoë says Ora Pharm is busy readying for its next phase of growth, establishing a new processing facility, pursuing a fresh capital raise, and turning strategy towards global markets.
“We started exporting to Australia earlier this year, and now have gross profit margins of around 50% under our R&D facility. Plus, we have offtake agreements in place before we’ve even built our next greenhouse,” she says.
“Our revenue is expected to hit $650k this year under current operations, while the next greenhouse is expected to reach $20m in revenue per year, once operational. We already have a bank that is willing to fund it, so right now we are just looking for partner funds.”
“The fact is, I have a deep understanding of how to develop this kind of product for the market over the first three years, and now know what needs to happen for the next three, and how the product development changes and develops.
“Other companies tend to take a ‘build it and they will come’ approach, whereas we take the opposite approach by securing contracts, de-risking them and going from there. We’ve proven this model time and time again, not just from my past life, but also through the current facility that we’ve built and the margins that we’re seeing there.
“We’ve also built a deep network, not just in New Zealand, but globally throughout the markets that we have previously worked with and are now aiming to be in, simply through our reputation for what we’re doing.”
Now that her life’s journey has brought her home to New Zealand, Zoë is proud to be sending this homegrown Kiwi product and attitude back out into the world.
“Obviously, New Zealand has such a fantastic brand presence globally, and our target markets are Europe and Australia. The fact that New Zealand has already built a positive brand image through products like manuka honey and wine absolutely helps us, as does the traditional ‘clean green’ image.
“This is not just lip service for us though. We are growing this company in a controlled way, but also a very sustainable way. For example, energy efficiencies are built into everything that we do. This includes making sure that we’re harvesting all the water we can from the roof and using solar energy panels and working towards being carbon neutral.
“For us, that’s important for moving the company forward in every aspect, not just for branding, but also for improving the quality of the product that we’re growing. New Zealand is so good at growing things and medicinal cannabis is one of those things. It’s a great environment to do that.
“I have seen the impact that this medicine can have on people’s lives, and it’s just amazing. Being an engineer, I’m very solutions driven, which is why whenever any problems come up, I know there’s always a way to overcome them.
“In the cannabis industry, you never really know what’s around the corner, or what you’ll have to be dealing with in the next hour, let alone the next week, so you need have a model and a team that are nimble, and able to adapt easily and change with things and move on, because you can never predict everything.”
Story by Brendan Boughen
Innovation Nation is an annual series celebrating stories of innovation and diversity in entrepreneurship from around New Zealand.
