CannTrust Holdings Inc. (“CannTrust” or the “Company”, TSX: TRST), one of Canada’s leading licensed producers and most trusted brands for medical cannabis, and Kindred, a wholly-owned Canadian subsidiary of Breakthru Beverage Group, have finalized their exclusive partnership.

Kindred will represent CannTrust’s cannabis products to the Canadian adult consumer market for recreational use and utilize the insights from its sister-company, Breakthru Beverage Canada, to deploy a state-of-the-art route-to-market platform for CannTrust.

“Our partnership with Kindred allows us to hit the ground running, utilizing their proven business model, sales technology, infrastructure and extensive relationships across Canada,” said Brad Rogers, President of CannTrust. “Entering this new category with a partner that brings a long history of operational and sales success in the Canadian marketplace is a logical step as we look to share our adult-use products with Canadian consumers.”

CannTrust is a leader in the cannabis industry, a federally regulated licensed producer and a proudly Canadian company, has led the Canadian market in producing standardized cannabis products since 2014. Started as Canada’s only pharmacist-founded medical cannabis producer, CannTrust brings more than 40 years of pharmacy and healthcare experience to the medical cannabis industry.

This new nation-wide agreement with Kindred, and recently announced agreements with 9 provinces positions CannTrust to be a leader in Canada’s recreational cannabis market.

Canadians from coast-to-coast will have access to CannTrust’s standardized cannabis products with the new recreational legislation and launch of four recreational brands – liiv, Synr.g, Xscape, and Peak Leaf available only in BC.

Kindred, a subsidiary of Breakthru Beverage Group, will leverage the company’s North American business insights, strategies, technology, and analytic tools as well as their talent development and training programs, all of which have enabled Breakthru to become the leading beverage alcohol brokerage in Canada.

“The structure and regulatory requirements for recreational cannabis are similar to those currently in place for beverage alcohol across Canada, and we believe we are in a unique position to leverage our strengths and relationships on behalf of CannTrust,” said David Prodanovic, Kindred’s General Manager. “By taking advantage of proven sales and analytics systems, paired with CannTrust’s brands we believe that together we are well positioned to be at the forefront of this emerging market.”

Breakthru Beverage Group purchased 902,405 common shares of CannTrust at a purchase price of $10.23 per share for gross proceeds of $9,231,600. Also, Breakthru Beverage Group has been issued warrants to purchase from CannTrust up to an additional 2,000,000 common shares in the aggregate at a price per share equal to the 5-day volume-weighted average price on the TSX immediately prior to the date the applicable warrants are exercised, if CannTrust exceeds certain sale thresholds.