Australia imported 81,119 kilograms of cannabis for medical purposes in 2025, according to Office of Drug Control figures updated in August 2026. Canada supplied 49,107 kilograms of that total, about 61 percent. A year earlier the Canadian share was 80 percent. Thailand went from roughly one tonne to 20,658 kilograms in the same twelve months.
Exporting cannabis flower to Australia in 2026 requires three things. You need a Health Canada export permit for each shipment. Your Australian importer needs an ODC import licence plus a shipment-specific import permit. And the product has to meet the quality standard set out in TGO 93. The decision that shapes everything else is whether your flower enters Australia as a finished medicinal cannabis product backed by GMP evidence, or as starting material for further manufacture at a TGA-licensed site. That one choice sets your buyer, your price, and your documentation load.
Australia cannabis imports in 2025: what the ODC numbers say
The ODC publishes import, export and production data every year, and the Therapeutic Goods Administration publishes supply data by dosage form. Most Canadian LPs quote the headline and skip the breakdown. Compared with 2024, the 2025 release looks like this:
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Total cannabis imported into Australia | 77,406 kg | 81,119 kg |
| Imported from Canada | 62,111 kg | 49,107 kg |
| Canadian share of imports | 80 percent | 61 percent |
| Imported from Thailand | About 1,100 kg | 20,658 kg |
| Australian domestic production | 41,328 kg | 55,337 kg |
| Australian exports | 3,312 kg | 6,780 kg |
The table says three things to a Canadian seller. Canadian volume fell 21 percent in a year when total imports set a record. Australia grew more flower at home than it bought from Canada, the first time that has happened since 2022. And roughly a quarter of what Australia imported in 2025 was still sitting in inventory at year end.
Price followed volume down. Statistics Canada customs data analysed by Business of Cannabis show Australian buyers paid between CA$2.37 and CA$2.72 per gram for Canadian dried flower through 2024 and early 2025. By February 2026 the average had dropped to CA$1.06 per gram, a fall of about 60 percent in two years and the lowest figure recorded for any major destination. The February 2026 shipment volume was 6,928 kilograms, so the trade didn't shrink. The margin did.
That combination, record supply and collapsing unit price, tells you what kind of market Australia is in 2026. It's a buyer's market where the buyer is also holding stock. A Canadian LP that competes there on volume and price alone is competing with Thailand for the bottom of the market, and will lose. The space that still pays is flower a sponsor can defend in front of a regulator.
The two-permit chain: Health Canada export permit and ODC import permit
Australia regulates the border under the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956, administered by the ODC. Canada regulates it under the Cannabis Act and the Cannabis Regulations. Every shipment needs a permit on both ends, and the two documents reference each other. This is the same two-permit chain that governs Canadian exports into Europe, with Australian paperwork swapped in.
What the Australian importer needs
The Australian importer (the sponsor) must hold an ODC licence to import, valid for up to 12 months. It then needs a separate import permit for each shipment and for each substance or preparation type. Before the ODC grants the licence, the importer has to show it is authorised under its state or territory law to possess and supply medicinal cannabis. Only delta-9 THC is permitted for import, and the importer declares the THC form on the permit application. The TGA has stated publicly that there are no fees for an import licence and permit. Australian cultivators, by contrast, told the ABC in May 2025 that they pay about AUD 50,000 a year to keep their Narcotic Drugs Act 1967 licences current.
Once the permit is used or expires, the importer returns the permit copy to the ODC within 14 days and files quarterly reports on medicinal cannabis activity. The ODC can inspect. Australian imports also count against the country's annual estimate lodged with the International Narcotics Control Board, which is why sponsors sometimes go quiet late in the year. Our guide to INCB import estimates covers that mechanism.
What the Canadian LP needs
On the Canadian side, you need a Health Canada export permit for each shipment, issued under the Cannabis Act to a licence holder with an export authorisation. Health Canada will generally only permit exports to a country with a legal medical or scientific cannabis framework, and the application needs the Australian import permit in hand. The full sequence is in our Health Canada export permit process guide.
Where Canadian LPs stall is sequencing. The ODC permit has a validity window, the Health Canada permit has its own, and the shipment has to land inside both. Miss the overlap and you reapply on one side while the other clock keeps running. Build the permit calendar before you accept the purchase order, not after.
TGO 93 and the starting-material fork: finished flower or bulk input
TGO 93 is the Therapeutic Goods (Standard for Medicinal Cannabis) Order 2017. It sets the minimum quality requirements for any medicinal cannabis manufactured in, imported into, or supplied in Australia. Under section 8, every active ingredient must come from the cannabis plant with no chemical modification. Section 15 covers labelling, section 16 covers microbiological quality, and section 13 covers manufacturing quality. The GMP, microbiological and labelling requirements have applied to all products released for supply in Australia since 1 July 2023. Responsibility for compliance sits with the sponsor, not the exporter, but the sponsor will push every requirement back to you.
Section 13 is the fork in the road
Section 13 requires that each step of manufacture that happens outside Australia meets one of the GMP standards listed in subsection 13(2). The Australian sponsor must hold written evidence of that compliance under subsection 13(3). The TGA accepts certification from specified foreign regulators. If your evidence isn't on that list, the sponsor can request a TGA inspection of your facility.
Subsection 13(1) is the exemption. Plant material, or oil extracted directly from the plant, is exempt from section 13 when it is used as starting material for further manufacture at a site that does hold GMP evidence. The TGA's own guidance spells out the consequence: dried flower imported under the exemption cannot be supplied directly to an unlicensed compounding pharmacy. It has to move to a TGA-licensed manufacturer in Australia, which performs the release-for-supply step. Dried flower that arrives with subsection 13(3) GMP evidence can be supplied directly.
| Lane | GMP evidence at origin | Release for supply | Australian counterparty | Commercial position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finished product | Required under s13(3) | Done by you or your GMP site | Sponsor supplying pharmacies | Priced as a product |
| Starting material | Exempt under s13(1) | Done at a TGA-licensed site in Australia | Licensed manufacturer | Priced as an input |
This is where Health Canada licensing and Australian expectations diverge. Health Canada's Good Production Practices are not GMP, and the TGA does not treat them as GMP. A Canadian LP holding only a Cannabis Act licence usually lands in the starting-material lane unless it also holds EU-GMP certification, or another accepted form of evidence, covering the steps that produce its flower. Our guide to EU-GMP certification for a Canadian cannabis facility explains what closing that gap involves.
Microbiology is the other filter. Section 16 limits for flower are tight enough that many Canadian LPs treat irradiation for export markets as a standard step for Australian orders rather than an exception. Sponsors have not had to lodge a TGO 93 declaration with the TGA since November 2021. The TGA runs random and targeted audits instead, testing active-ingredient claims and screening for contaminants. The evidence has to exist even though nobody files it up front.
If you don't hold GMP evidence that covers your flower, you are selling an input, not a product, and you should negotiate like it. Pretending otherwise costs you the deal when the sponsor's quality team reads your documentation.
The 2026 compliance climate and how Canadian LPs should position
In May 2025 the Australian Cannabis Cultivator Guild formed, saying it represented 80 percent of the country's medicinal cannabis growers. It asked the federal government to prioritise domestic producers over what it called an import-flooded market. On 9 July 2025 the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency issued prescribing guidance and confirmed action against 57 practitioners, with 60 more under investigation. In August 2025 the TGA opened a consultation on the oversight of unapproved medicinal cannabis products. On 22 January 2026 the TGA named medicinal cannabis as one of 12 priority focus areas in its Compliance Principles for 2026 and 2027. Eight months from a grower lobby forming to a named enforcement priority. Read those four dates as one sequence, not four headlines.
No formal tariff on imported cannabis existed as of early 2026. The debate is live inside the Department of Health and the ODC, and the 2025 data gives the domestic lobby its strongest argument yet. Canadian LPs should plan for a market where the regulatory floor rises even if a tariff never arrives.
What this means for a Canadian supplier
Prescriber enforcement cuts script volume, which lands as slower inventory turns at the sponsor, which lands as smaller and later purchase orders for you. Expect sponsors to tighten export payment terms and to ask for stability data behind the shelf life on your label. Their quality teams will want the full COA panel TGO 93 names: potency, microbial counts, heavy metals, pesticides and mycotoxins including ochratoxin A. They will also want batch traceability that survives an audit. Fewer buyers will tolerate a quote with no lane declared.
That leaves a Canadian supplier with a short list. First, decide which section 13 lane your flower sits in before you quote, because the number is different in each. Second, if you want the finished-product lane, build the GMP evidence file now or contract a TGA-licensed Australian manufacturer to perform release for supply. Third, qualify the sponsor as hard as it qualifies you: confirm the ODC import licence is current, the state authorisation exists, and the quarterly reporting is clean. Pricing discipline matters too. Our analysis of what drives bulk flower pricing shows how quickly a destination can reset the number.
AlphaLeaf is a Health Canada Licensed Producer growing indoor, hand-trimmed flower in Montreal. Every batch ships with ISO/IEC 17025 test results, traceability from clone to carton, and export authorisation under the Cannabis Act. That is the documentation set an Australian sponsor needs on file when the TGA asks about a Canadian supply partner. If you are an Australian sponsor sourcing flower, or a Canadian LP weighing the Australian channel, talk to our export team.
Australia will keep buying Canadian flower in 2026. It will buy less of it, and it will check more of it. Build for that.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much cannabis does Australia import from Canada?
Australia imported 49,107 kilograms of cannabis from Canada in 2025, about 61 percent of its 81,119 kilogram total, according to Office of Drug Control data updated in August 2026. In 2024 the figures were 62,111 kilograms and an 80 percent share.
What permits are needed to export cannabis from Canada to Australia?
The Canadian LP needs a Health Canada export permit for each shipment under the Cannabis Act. The Australian importer needs an ODC import licence, valid for up to 12 months, under the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956. It also needs a separate import permit for each shipment and each substance or preparation type.
Does Canadian cannabis flower need GMP certification to enter Australia?
It depends on the lane. Flower supplied directly as a finished medicinal cannabis product needs GMP evidence held by the Australian sponsor under TGO 93 subsection 13(3). Flower imported as starting material for further manufacture at a TGA-licensed site is exempt under subsection 13(1), but it cannot be supplied directly to an unlicensed pharmacy.
What is TGO 93?
TGO 93 is the Therapeutic Goods (Standard for Medicinal Cannabis) Order 2017. It sets the minimum quality standard for medicinal cannabis manufactured in, imported into, or supplied in Australia, covering active ingredients, contaminants, microbiological limits, labelling and manufacturing quality. The Australian sponsor is legally responsible for compliance.
Are there fees for an Australian cannabis import licence?
The TGA has stated that there are no fees for an ODC licence and permit to import medicinal cannabis. Australian cultivators, by comparison, have reported paying about AUD 50,000 a year to maintain their domestic licences, including inspection costs.
Does AlphaLeaf supply flower to Australian sponsors?
AlphaLeaf holds export authorisation under the Cannabis Act and supplies indoor-grown, hand-trimmed flower with ISO/IEC 17025 batch testing and full traceability records. Australian sponsors and manufacturers can request documentation and availability through the AlphaLeaf contact page.
