Hikurangi offer floods website

Investors reported the campaign crashed again on Wednesday, barring them from buying shares. The campaign closed on Thursday morning, after raising a total of $2.2m.

PledgeMe’s Anna Guenther apologised for the system failure. The platform recently upgraded to cloud server Amazon Web Services to handle larger campaigns, she said. ‘‘We thought scaling servers wouldn’t be a problem. We were wrong.’’

Waiapu Investments director Panapa Ehau said the company was humbled by the support it had received.

Hikurangi closed its first $1m investment round earlier this week. That round offered $1 shares to community members in the East Coast region, where its hemp plantation is based.

The firm planned to raise $1m via crowdfunding, and another $3m to $4m from institutional investors, to build a pharmaceuticalgrade processing facility and to upscale plant-growing operations in Ruatoria. Investment would also be used to fund clinical trials of medicinal cannabis.

Cannabis use for any reason, including as medicine, is illegal in New Zealand. Hikurangi has one of three Ministry of Health licences to grow cannabis for research and development.

A bill to legalise its use for medicinal reasons will be read in Parliament for the second time this year.