Europe’s CBD industry is emerging from the novel foods era smaller, weaker and stripped of many of the companies that fueled the sector’s early boom.
What began as a regulatory exercise has turned into a potential commercial washout, already eliminating a large share of the market’s early participants. Hundreds of companies that once rushed into the sector during the CBD boom are now gone, dormant or stripped down to survival mode as the economics behind ingestible “wellness” CBD continue to deteriorate.
In the United Kingdom alone, nearly 500 companies were at one time associated with roughly 12,000 products on the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) CBD novel foods list. Some analysts estimate that roughly half of those companies have since disappeared.
Intense pressure
The long delays tied to the UK’s FSA process compounded the pressure. Companies were forced to keep operating in limbo while waiting years for scientific reviews and toxicology assessments that remain unresolved for much of the sector. By the time the FSA process took shape, the European CBD sector was already weakening after a boom-and-bust cycle that left an oversupply, leading to falling prices.
The UK market was initially held together, in part, by consortium-style applications to the FSA that combined hundreds of brands under shared toxicology and scientific data packages. One of the most prominent was the UK’s Association for the Cannabinoid Industry (ACI) consortium, which included companies such as British Cannabis, Charlotte’s Web and Dragonfly Biosciences.
THIS SERIES:
• PART 1: UK’s switch to EU food safety rules could push thousands of CBD products to dead end
• PART 2: Europe’s CBD bottleneck tightens as UK pathway stalls before EU regulatory handover
• PART 3: Europe’s CBD casualties mount as novel foods process radically reshapes the market
• PART 4: What’s left: It remains to be seen if there’ll be a market for CBD beyond medical formulas
But that grouping gradually faded as the novel foods process dragged on and costs escalated. Many of the smaller brands that entered under shared applications disappeared, withdrew products or fell into financial distress.
Brokedown model
Meanwhile, the EU, through the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), tightened safety expectations and paused assessments over unresolved toxicology questions, narrowing the commercial pathway for ingestible CBD.
For smaller brands, the original promise of CBD as a low-barrier wellness category has largely evaporated. Many entered the market through white-label products and contract manufacturing arrangements during the late-2010s CBD surge, when private-label tinctures, capsules and edibles flooded Europe with few meaningful barriers to entry.
That model broke down as prices weakened, inventories piled up, and the regulatory scene shifted.
Global challenges
The shakeout is also being reinforced by broader global conditions.
The CBD market appears to be sliding into a second glut as the upheaval in Europe and a crackdown on CBD-based intoxicating hemp products in the United States collide with persistent oversupply from China.
Evidence continues to mount that supply outpaces demand, particularly for CBD isolate. Reports of unsold inventories, falling prices and stalled transactions suggest a market still struggling to absorb excess production.
Who’s out
The turmoil has already led to a number of prominent CBD companies and brands disappearing from the FSA process in the UK:
Charlotte’s Web/Savage Cabbage: The FSA’s November 2025 update removed more than 30 products linked to joint Charlotte’s Web/Savage Cabbage applications from the public CBD list. It is unclear whether the removals were voluntary withdrawals, FSA-initiated actions, or a combination of both. Savage Cabbage had an additional 22 products entered on its own, all of which were also removed.
Publicly traded Charlotte’s Web, based in Colorado, is among the most prominent CBD producers in the U.S. The company, which appears not to have reported the UK withdrawal in any official communication with shareholders, has struggled for years amid the broader collapse of the CBD sector, reporting persistent losses despite repeated restructuring efforts. The company lost roughly $30 million in 2025 while revenues remained flat at about $50 million.
Savage Cabbage is a UK-based CBD distributor and white-label operator that served as Charlotte’s Web’s official UK/EU partner during the novel foods process. The company remains formally active in the UK, but Companies House — the UK government’s corporate registry — shows a proposal to strike off the company, meaning it could be dissolved and removed from the register, while court filings tied to its parent, Cannim Group, described the business as “borderline insolvent.”
JM Wholesale of the UK lost more than 300 of roughly 700 products in review as the result of a major FSA purge early in the process in January 2023. JM Wholesale is a distributor and wholesaler of CBD, vape and smoking products that supplies retailers across the UK through white-label, distribution and drop-shipping operations. The company ran into financial trouble in 2026 amid tighter UK vape rules, and Companies House now lists JM Wholesale as under insolvency protection.
British Cannabis, one of the UK’s largest CBD operators, had about 50 products removed from its original submission of roughly 1,500 products into the process. The company is a white-label supplier, producing oils, capsules and other cannabinoid wellness products under brands such as Canabidol and ACCESS CBD. The company also operates in the UK medical cannabis sector.
RX Pharmatech, which shows roughly 1,300 products still in the review, had only 10 of its products removed, but the company itself appears to have largely disappeared following the collapse and breakup of parent 22nd Century Group’s hemp and cannabinoid division. The U.S. tobacco and biotech company acquired RX Pharmatech in 2023 through its hemp subsidiary, GVB Biopharma, whose toxicology and technical data underpinned many of the company’s UK novel foods applications. Later that year, after heavy losses and a strategic retreat from hemp, 22nd Century sold off GVB, RX Pharmatech and related assets to a newly formed entity tied to former GVB insiders, leaving the long-term status of the RX portfolio unclear.
Jersey Hemp had only seven CBD products in the FSA’s review, but the company’s profile was raised when it won a landmark 2024 legal case against the UK Home Office, which had banned the import of its products due to trace amounts of THC. Jersey Hemp said losing access to the UK market as a result of the lawsuit forced it to lay off staff and sell equipment, and it has not regained any presence.