CannaTrade is 20 years old!
A historical summary of 20 years CannaTrade and the history of
hemp in Switzerland
The history of CannaTrade began in 2001, when Marco Kuhn - the
founder of CannaTrade - turned the "Swiss Hemp Days" into the
international hemp trade fair CannaTrade in Bern for the first
time. This was during the days of Switzerland’s hemp shops,
known as ‘Duftsäckli’, when Switzerland was almost home
to more hemp shops than bakeries! The reason for this was a
loophole in the narcotics law which only explicitly prohibited hemp
when it began to be used for intoxication purposes. For several
years, Switzerland was the number one country for cannabis and
anyone who was anyone on the scene flocked to this Alpine land to
be a part of this green gold rush. Marco Kuhn invested everything
in these times to turn the small Swiss hemp fair into THE
international meeting place for the cannabis industry. Thank
you, Marco!
At this time, CannaTrade was one of
Europe’s three hemp exhibitions alongside
‘Cannabusiness’ in Germany and ‘Highlife’
in Holland and it is the only one of the three to have survived the
tough years which followed. The decline in all of the countries was
triggered by a shift in the political situation. Germany, still
known as taking a repressive approach to cannabis, was the first to
slam the brakes on and Cannabusiness disappeared from the scene in
2005. The Highlife trade fair in Holland survived a few years
longer but soon had to close its doors too, despite Holland’s
liberal policy on cannabis. CannaTrade suffered following the end
of the legendary ‘Duftsäckli’ period: but up until
2008, it was still permitted to sell hemp seeds (to sow) and at
this time, around 40% of exhibitors at CannaTrade were doing this.
However the fun came to an end just three days (!) before the final
hemp fair in Bern in spring 2008.
Ben Arn, the organizer
of CannaTrade since 2006, still vividly recalls this day: “We
were already in the festival hall setting up at the BernExpo in
Bern when the notification came from the authorities. There were to
be no seeds permitted on the exhibition site and any stands found
to be in breach of this ruling would be shut down without delay. I
looked around the hall and saw the large logo of the Greenhouse
Seed Cooperation which was already hanging from the ceiling and
then had to inform all 30 seed banks that they were no longer
permitted to sell seeds at the exhibition”. The damage was
enormous – exhibitors and visitors alike were disappointed and
CannaTrade was virtually dead. The seeds business increasingly
moved to California and Spain because the laws on cultivating
cannabis were being relaxed there at the same time.
Despite the trying circumstances, there were no thoughts of
giving up at the CannaTrade offices (yet). In 2009, when the Ice
Hockey World Championships were scheduled for the same time period
as the trade fair and so all hotel rooms in Bern were booked up
over the CannaTrade weekend, in addition to smoking having been
banned in Bern, CannaTrade opted to relocate to the Basel, a city
on the Rhine between the countries of Switzerland, Germany and
France - where smoking had also not yet been made illegal. With the
exception of most of the seed banks, it was possible to persuade
the exhibitors to come to Basel where they could secure customers
from all three countries, thereby retaining the status of the trade
fair. However, the departure of the seed banks triggered an
inevitable downward spiral which was foreseeable in advance: after
all, if you cannot plant anything, you do not need any cultivation
tools and CannaTrade could not survive solely from its smoking
accessory stands.
Following two trade fairs in Basel which made a financial loss,
CannaTrade took a break in 2011 to redefine itself. While Spain
permitted Cannabis Social Clubs and various US states authorized
cannabis for medical use and subsequently for leisure consumption,
this was a time of status quo for drugs policy in Switzerland. The
rejected Hemp Initiative of 2008 was still too fresh in the memory
for any change to happen soon. Yet it was in this year, unnoticed
by many, that the foundations were laid for the current boom in
CBD. Switzerland changed the maximum permitted THC value for
(industrial) help from 0.3% to max. 1%. Without realizing the
impact that this half a percent of THC would have, from 2012 the
organizers planned to run CannaTrade every two years as a small yet
refined hemp trade fair in Switzerland. A suitable hall was
identified in the form of the city hall in Dietikon and a total of
three CannaTrade exhibitions were hosted here on the edge of the
metropolis of Zurich up until 2016. It was not an international
hemp fair but rather a Swiss gathering for the industry, with a few
foreign guests reminiscing about the good old days or seeking to
retain a foothold in Switzerland. It was fun, despite being
voluntary on the part of the organizers.
And this continued until spring 2016 when the CannaTrade
telephone rang and a customer by the name of Bio Can AG announced
that they wanted to exhibit cannabis flower at CannaTrade 2016.
Cannabis flower? Ben Arn recalls the moment as if it were
yesterday. “I was getting out of my car when my phone rang
and I was told in confidence that a method had been found of
selling weed legally at the trade fair. I couldn’t believe
what I was hearing, I thought it must be a joke and asked to see
the official documents. When I received them a short time later, I
immediately felt a sense of hope that all the waiting had been
worthwhile and the Swiss hemp industry and, with it CannaTrade,
would flourish like before…” And so the time came. Not in
2016 but by the following year it was back and with it, the gold
rush atmosphere. CannaTrade moved from Dietikon to Hall 622 in
Zürich-Oerlikon and the 2018 and 2019 trade fairs quickly sold out.
The leisurely Swiss hemp fair was transformed overnight into one of
the key meeting places for the European cannabis industry.
Customers from over 40 countries attended the trade fair in 2019
and so the next step was clear: time to return to the start, to
Bern and Switzerland’s largest exhibition center.
The plan was for CannaTrade 2020 to be twice as big as in 2018
and 2019 and even bigger than before. The run-up was (and still
is!) intense with work taking place day and night. Up until March
2020, that is. When a small virus paralyzed the whole world and
made it impossible for CannaTrade 2020 to go ahead. Everything had
to be halted two months before the exhibition date, a financial
disaster as Ben Arn explains. “Imagine, after 10 months of
intense work, all the partners and services being booked and some
already purchased and paid for and then the trade fair had to be
cancelled”. But the exhibitors did their bit, did not request
back their deposit payments and helped to fill the Covid void with
a 25% surcharge. And all this in spite of the fact that the trade
fair cannot go ahead in 2021 either and has provisionally been
postponed until May 2022. Ben Arn explains their loyalty. “On
the one hand, it is clear that this relates to the shift in
political circumstances. Thanks to pilot projects (experimental
items) and the new legislation relating to the cultivation and
export of medicinal THC cannabis, Switzerland is back on the
international cannabis stage. Add to this the fact that we have a
long-standing and often very close and friendly relationship with
many of the exhibitors. Both have meant that we were not just left
high and dry”.
So now, in its 20th year, CannaTrade is looking to the future with
calm and positivity. The trade fair is fully booked for 2022 and
the Covid-enforced break has been used to launch a new series of
events exclusively for business customers. Last September, the
first B2B networking event was organized in Zurich under the name
of ‘CB Club – Cannabis Business Club of Switzerland’.
The next event will take place in Montreux, as soon as Covid
conditions permit events of 200 people to go ahead again. And in
September of this year, the first purely business fair will take
place in Zurich under the name of ‘CB Expo – Cannabis
Business Expo and Conference’. Despite the ongoing lockdown
in Europe, the fair is already half booked up and at present, it
can be assumed that the fair will go ahead because it is designed
to accommodate 500 – max. 1000 guests per day and not 10,000 like
the large CannaTrade visitor fair.
CannaTrade aims to celebrate its birthday based on the same motto
– with an event for 500 people. On the weekend of 2-4 July 2021,
the ‘20 years CannaTrade – Festival’ will take place at
the premises of BernExpo where the trade fair originated and will
return next year – with 20 trade fair stands and all the
established highlights such as the CannaSwissCup awards show, the
Joint Roll Contest Swiss Championship and the Hemp Food Festival.
Despite everything, Ben Arn is convinced that the CannaTrade
ambience will still be present in a smaller setting with some music
and a covered chill-out area. “After over a year without
events, without live music and without CannaTrade, I am really
looking forward to the weekend – and I am assuming I am not alone!
The ‘20 years CannaTrade’ event will be a mix of
back-to-the-roots and anticipation of the next big
CannaTrade”.
