Kava launching onto ASX in world first

By Eliot Hastie

— 1 minute read

03 October 2018

Fiji Kava is launching on the Australian Stock Exchange in October and will be the first kava listing on any global stock exchange.

Currently an unlisted company, Fiji Kava is a therapeutic goods company which makes its product using the kava plant that is native to the South Pacific.

The company announced its intention to conduct an AU$13.7 million IPO with an intention to raise AU$5.2 million from investors.

Fiji Kava is the only foreign company to be granted permission by the Fiji Government to operate in the industry and is looking to expand into the US $15 billion benzodiazepine market.

Fiji Kava’s founder and CEO Zane Yoshida said that the company is well positioned to capitalise on the growing market in Australia, where over a decade the number of stressed Australians has increased by a third.

“We want to provide a natural remedy to people that are increasingly stressed and exhausted,” said Mr Yoshida.

Mr Yoshida said that Kava is a natural remedy for anxiety, stress, insomnia and muscle tension and recent regulatory changes made it a viable product around the world.

“I’ve benefited from growing up with kava and I’m now in a position where we can farm and regulate our kava production to produce products for the global market.

“We are taking this a step further with the proprietary profiling of specific kava cultivars with specific chemotype and kavalactone profiles to target anxiety, stress, insomnia, and muscle relaxation,” he said.

Fiji Kava’s chairman Andrew Kelly said that the product produced by the company was backed up by medical research and they would continue to test their products.

“Fiji Kava is producing research backed products, with further independent clinical trials with the National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM) taking place to target medical conditions such as anxiety, insomnia, muscle recovery and heart disease,” he said.