Five years ago, Lukasz Pieniazek and his team were looking for a place to grow cannabis. His home country of Poland wasn't an option - at least not legally - so they set their sights further south. North Macedonia had just opened its doors to medical cannabis licensing, and it quickly became the launching pad for what would become Endo Canna: a Polish-funded, Macedonian-rooted cultivation company focused entirely on small-batch, high-quality medical flower. "We're not chasing mass production," says Lukasz, CEO of Endo Canna. "We're a boutique grower. The goal was always top-shelf flower for the medical market."
Why North Macedonia?
Back in 2020, Poland still hadn't regulated cannabis cultivation. So when the Endo Canna team spotted North Macedonia's relatively progressive licensing approach, they moved fast. They partnered with local investors, acquired a licensed facility, and got to work. "The cultivation facility needed quite a bit of additional work, even though it was already built," Lukasz says, laughing. "Let's say we had to do more than just plug in a few lights."
Choosing the right partners was half the battle. "We weren't just looking at business plans, we were looking at people. Trust was non-negotiable," he adds.
High-tech, high-maintenance
Endo Canna's facility runs on aeroponics, one of the more high-maintenance growing systems out there. It's notoriously sensitive and not exactly common in the Balkans, where power outages are a routine part of life. To make it work, the team built in redundancies: backup generators, layered fail-safes, and enough water filtration tech to prevent any disruption to cultivation "It's not an easy system, but the payoff is worth it. Aeroponics gives you a super-clean flower with a low microbial count, which is exactly what the medical market demands," says Lukasz.
He was hands-on with the design from day one: reverse osmosis, piping, chillers, full utility layout. All while the team entered a full year of R&D in 2024, dialing in genetics, refining SOPs, and figuring out which cultivars are best to grow in aeroponics, because not all do.
The great pheno hunt
Most of 2024 was spent on phenotype hunting, starting from seed and moving to clones as they narrowed down the candidates. The team logged everything, plant structure, terpene profiles, THC percentages, rooting success rates, disease resistance, into a custom database to identify the best performers.
"We reduced the number of phenos each run until we got down to a handful per cultivar," says Lukasz. "Now we've selected our keepers." The first product line will feature genetics exclusive to Endo Canna, developed in-house. But the team's also keeping the pipeline fresh: they've partnered with Segra and brought in cultivars for trial runs.
Germany first, then Poland
Endo Canna's primary market is Germany,for now. "The registration process is faster and the volumes make sense," Lukasz points out. Poland, while home turf for the team, takes about nine months to approve a product. Still, the plan is to hit Polish pharmacies by next year. This year, German shelves will see the first batches, trimmed by hand and dried the old-fashioned way. "We do everything manually. Hang-dry, hand-trim, and tailor it to what the client wants, trimmed or untrimmed," he says. "Right now, we're operating under GACP, but GMP is on the horizon."
Scaling up fast
Endo Canna's production capacity is already sold out, and they haven't even delivered their first product yet. Expansion is next. The facility was designed with scalability in mind, and tripling output is as simple as building out more flowering rooms. Investments are on the table. "The market is moving in the right direction. European regulations are opening up, and there's space for companies like ours to grow." Endo Canna's first release will include Joker, clocking in at 31% THC, and Tropical Banana, which lands at 28% with an "amazing" terpene profile, among others. "If all goes to plan, these will start landing in German pharmacies just in time for vacation season."
For more information:
Endo Canna
endocanna.eu