You won't find the company's address in the phone book and on its website all that's listed under the "contact us" page is a P.O. Box.

"It's like something out of The Avengers," says veteran stockbroker Hugh Robertson. "It's not supposed to exist".

And that's for a very good reason.

Although TPI processes poppy seeds for the food industry,  that's not its core business. Inside its factory, at an undisclosed location in Melbourne's north, it turns poppy straw into morphine, codeine and thebaine, which is another narcotic raw material.

Security and regulation around the manufacture of these opiate medications is high, so much so that TPI is one of only eight  companies around the world that is licensed to process opium poppies into narcotics.

But although demand is growing for these pain relief medications – about 75 per cent of the world's population has limited or no access to them – and TPI has capacity to process about 10 per cent of the world's supply, it has failed to win over investors.

Since it floated last August, its stock has dived more than 38 per cent. This compares with the broader market easing just 2 per cent.

Its balance sheet is also laced with red ink. Its net loss has ballooned 79.3 per cent to $25.9 million in the 12 months to December 30, while its revenue sank 56.2 per cent to $3.7 million.

But it has some big-name backers. Its biggest shareholder is BRW Rich List veteran Robert Millner's listed investments company Washington H Soul Pattinson. Alex Waislitz's Thorney Opportunities is also among its major shareholders.

TPI's managing director Jarrod Ritchie is confident this will be the company's break-out year and earnings will tip into positive territory.

Part of the reason TPI's earnings were weaker than expected was because it shifted its factory from Tasmania to Victoria, which meant it couldn't produce any narcotic raw material for about a year.

And once it shipped all its equipment to the mainland, it had to win re-accreditation from its customers, which is close to being completed, but further hit sales.

However, the shift to the mainland is a big reason why Mr Ritchie is upbeat about the year ahead. Until 2014, Tasmania, which supplies about 40 per cent of the world's legal opiates, had a monopoly on Australia's poppy production.

This put the whole industry at risk, as Mr Ritchie says, because rain, not enough rain and disease had wiped out crops at various times in the Apple Isle.

But much to the umbrage of the Tasmanians, Victoria legalised opium poppy farming two years ago. The Northern Territory quickly followed, then South Australia and NSW is expected introduce similar legislation later this year.

Being able to grow poppies not only spreads the agricultural risk across the continent, it also ensures there is plenty of supply to go around with the opium poppy industry being previously dominated by global pharmaceutical titans GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Johnson and Johnson.

"We have finally sorted out the supply problems that have plagued us for the last four or five years," Mr Ritchie said, adding that the company was close to being able to import product from Europe as well.

It hasn't just been supply issues that have hindered TPI's growth. Soon after Mr Ritchie founded the company, his old employer GSK, took him to court, alleging intellectual property theft.

GSK argued in the Supreme Court that Mr Ritchie took advantage of knowledge he had gained in the seven years he worked at the GSK's poppy plant at Port Fairy, Victoria.

The legal battle, in which Mr Ritchie who sold all his personal assets to fund his defence, and at one stage representing himself due to limited resources, lasted for almost five years. Mr Ritchie finally got his relief in 2009 when Supreme Court judge David Harper awarded costs against GSK, after ruling in Mr Ritchie's favour a year earlier.

Indeed Australia's opium poppy processing industry has seen more corporate activity in the past 18 months than the past 45 years.

Last March, GSK sold its Australian opiates division to India's biggest pharmaceutical business, Sun Pharma, and this year Johnson and Johnson offloaded its poppy operation, Tasmanian Alkaloids, for reportedly around $800 million.

"The value of these companies isn't necessarily its output, it's their licences," says broker Robertson, who worked on the TPI float.

And Mr Ritchie is planning to leverage the company's experience with gaining these licences with what could be possibly its first step in diversification – medicinal cannabis.

The Victoria government passed laws last month to allow an estimated 470 children suffering various conditions, including epilepsy, access to medicinal cannabis.

Mr Ritchie says the opium poppy processing industry is the perfect model to allow commercial production of medical marijuana.

"If it's highly regulated, a prohibited product and comes from a plant, then we know how to do it," he says.