The six DTAM export categories: a Thai grower's guide for 2026

Six doors, and most farms hold the sixth

If you cultivate cannabis under a Thai licence, one question decides whether your flower can leave the country: which of six recognised statuses does your operation hold. Thailand's Ministerial Regulation No. 2 B.E. 2569 narrowed cannabis-flower export to six categories administered by the Department of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine (DTAM). That is a public regulatory fact, and one of the six will be yours.

Here they are in plain terms. Read down the list and find your operation.

1. A hospital licence under the Sanatorium Act — you are a licensed medical facility.
2. A herbal-product manufacturing or sales licence — you make or sell herbal products.
3. A drug manufacturing or sales licence — you make or sell registered medicines.
4. A Category-5 narcotics licence — you hold the extract licence covering cannabis and hemp.
5. Certified traditional-healer status — you are a recognised folk healer.
6. A cultivation site supplying a licensed buyer — you grow, and you supply a licensed downstream party.

Most farms are not a hospital, a drug maker, or an extract house. Most farms grow. That places you in category six — the door where a grower's work and a broker's work meet.

What category six actually requires

Category six is not "grow, and you are done." The regulation ties your export eligibility to a licensed buyer. You cultivate the flower; a licensed downstream party — one that itself holds a qualifying status, or a licensed importer in the destination market — takes the material. Your file is complete only once that relationship is documented.

Put plainly: a category-six farm with no documented licensed buyer has not satisfied the framework on its own. You can hold a clean cultivation licence, run a compliant TH-GACP site, and still fall short of export eligibility, because the buyer half of the equation is missing. This is the most common gap we see, and it is precisely the gap a broker exists to close.

The wider mechanics — DTAM as the issuing authority, the tightened premises and storage rules, the treatment of older licences — sit in our brief on Thailand's DTAM export framework.

Where CannaBless sits, and where it does not

Be clear about what we are. CannaBless is an export brokerage, not an exporter. We do not take title to your flower, we do not hold your inventory, and we are not the licensed buyer. What we do is register your farm, assemble its documentation against the category you fall under, and connect you to a licensed importer in one of our served markets.

Those markets are six: Switzerland, Germany and France as priorities, with the United Kingdom, Australia and the Czech Republic also served. The destination-side documentation differs by country — Germany's BfArM and Bundesopiumstelle pathway and Switzerland's Swissmedic route are not the same audit — and knowing which importer clears which market is part of what we carry.

So when you sit in category six, the broker's task is direct. We introduce and document the licensed buyer that makes your category complete. You keep cultivating. We carry the registration, the ISO/IEC 17025 quality-assurance documentation, the export logistics, and the cross-market matching.

If your category is one of the other five

Some farms sit alongside a second status — a licensed operation that also manufactures herbal products, an extract-licence holder, or a hospital-affiliated grow. If that is you, your qualifying category may be one of the first five rather than the sixth.

That is a stronger paperwork position, not a weaker one, and we document against whichever category actually applies. The point of walking the list is honesty about which door you hold: the regulator checks the real status, not the convenient one.

Selectivity, and the scale of the register

Category six is not a crowded field of qualified exporters. The DTAM register recorded roughly 79 GACP-certified operators as at 16 July 2025 — the supply universe from which export-eligible flower can lawfully be assembled. That figure is a measure of scarcity and of the selectivity the framework demands, not a headcount of anyone's clients.

Proof the pathway runs end to end

A category on paper is a claim; an executed shipment is proof. The only public reference we cite is the Italian import permit IT-20261155773424 — 700 kg of Cannabis Sativa L., arriving Genova in June 2026, phytosanitary-certified and GACP-aligned. One government-accepted movement shows that the chain from a licensed Thai farm, through documentation, to a licensed destination importer actually clears customs. We do not name partners, farms, labs, or importers — the executed permit does the talking.

A word on foreign capital

One caution while we are naming lawful routes. If your future involves foreign capital — a farm expansion, an OEM line, an outside investor — the lawful structures are a JV partnership, BOI-promoted investment, or OEM supply. Nominee shareholding is an offence under the Thai Foreign Business Act and carries serious consequences; we steer growers away from it, never toward it. The distinction is set out in our note on JV and BOI structuring versus nominee arrangements.

Talk to the export desk

If you cultivate under a Thai licence and are not certain which of the six categories you hold — or you sit in category six with no documented licensed buyer — that is the conversation to have. Start with a short chat and a documents review. We will tell you plainly which category is yours and which pieces we assemble, so you can get back to the field.