While a challenging year on many fronts, the CBD market in the USA remains relatively healthy.
According to Brightfield Group‘s latest US CBD Market Industry Update, the US hemp-derived CBD market is expected to hit $4.7 billion in retail sales in 2021, a modest increase of 2.5% on sales last year.
It will come as no surprise that online sales have been strong this year as folks continued to hunker down. Online sales of CBD will surpass $1.8 billion, accounting for nearly 39% of total sales.
As for the companies capturing the largest chunks of the market, Brightfield said the top 5 CBD companies in Q3 remained unchanged as compared to Q2, with Charlotte’s Web and Your CBD Store (SunMed) leading the pack.
But indicating how many players are involved in the USA and how much loyalty is spread, even leader Charlotte’s Web only had around 3.2% of the market. While Brightfield notes the top 20 CBD companies saw their share of market grow quarter-over-quarter, this was following increased consolidation and M&A activity.
Looking ahead, Brightfield is expecting strong growth next year and in the years ahead for cannabidiol sales in the USA, which are expected to reach $12.0 billion by 2026. This will be driven by the increasing availability of products such as drinks (40% CAGR) and cannabidiol becoming more commonly available via larger mainstream distribution channels, such as grocery (31% CAGR).
Just in regard to cannabidiol use during the pandemic, according to Statista, COVID had a significant impact on consumption across the world last year.
“In both mature and emerging CBD markets, 29 percent and 28 percent of survey respondents, respectively, reported increasing their CBD consumption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
But why? Perhaps to relieve worry and anxiety.
While more research is needed, a study published last year found preliminary evidence from human trials using healthy volunteers and those with social anxiety disorder that cannabidiol may have anxiolytic (anxiety reduction) effects.
And on a related note, Statista pegs sales of CBD products in the United States at 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and expected to the market to grow to 16 billion dollars by 2026.
Something both sets of figures don’t indicate is the cost of CBD is dropping – it’s good news for consumers, but more challenging for cannabidiol companies.
