Tag Archives: Technology

Leaders in Cannabis Formulations: Part 2

By Aaron Green
2 Comments

Editor’s Note: In Part 1 of this series, green sat down with Drew Hathaway, senior food scientist at Stillwater Brands. Click here to see Part 1.

Natural cannabinoid distillates and isolates are hydrophobic oils and solids, meaning that they do not mix well with water and are poorly absorbed in the human body after consumption. By formulating these ingredients using a patented delivery system technology, trademarked VESIsorb®, Geocann has overcome common obstacles associated with fat-soluble active ingredients, including poor stability, bioavailability, absorption, and solubility. In addition, Geocann has peer-reviewed, published evidence of the dramatic improvements in Cmax, AUC, and Tmax (“time to peak absorption” directly related to “fast-acting” benefits).

Geocann is a cannabis formulation company with its headquarters in Fort Collins, Colorado, and additional offices in Chicago, Illinois and Zurich, Switzerland. The company is led by an impressive leadership team of scientists, pharmacists, researchers and natural product industry leaders. Geocann’s technology platform has been successfully applied to a wide range of cannabis product applications, including soft gel and hard-shell capsules, functional foods (e.g. gummies) and beverages, powder systems, tinctures, sublingual sprays and topically applied formulations. Brand partners in the U.S. utilizing Geocann’s technology for hemp applications include Nestlé Health Science, Cannaray and Onnit, and brand partners for medical and adult-use cannabis applications include Curaleaf, Sunderstorm and CannaCraft, among others.

We spoke with Jesse Lopez, CEO and Founder of Geocann, about their product formulation technology in cannabis and how they work with brand partners in the U.S and internationally. Lopez started Geocann in 2018 alongside the success he’s experienced at SourceOne Global Partners (founded in 2003 by Lopez), a leading formulation company in the nutraceuticals space with a reputation for pioneering innovative products that combine science-backed ingredients with patented drug delivery system technologies to address the most pressing consumer health concerns, such as heart health, cognitive function, inflammatory response, metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes, among others.

Aaron Green: Jesse, first off, how did you get involved in the cannabis industry?

Jesse Lopez: Our focus at SourceOne Global Partners has been on natural products for nearly two decades. Some of the folks involved with our natural products business decided that they would get involved in the cannabis business and they asked for my support at the Advisory Board level. I agreed to serve and figured I better learn about the cannabis industry! We realized that there was a tremendous opportunity for utilizing our drug delivery system technology to enhance the value of these cannabis-based products. Due to the regulatory environment, strategic legal counsel and new investments necessary to take an immediate leadership position in the cannabis industry we launched Geocann in 2018 with an office in a fully legal state at the time, Colorado.

Green: How do you select the natural products you work with at SourceOne?

Jesse Lopez, CEO and Founder of Geocann

Lopez: We really focus on science-backed natural product ingredients that may require high doses to reach therapeutic blood levels. By combining these science-backed ingredients with patented technologies – which we own the global rights to – these products offer desirable differentiation for leading brands, such as dramatically improved absorption and bioavailability, patent protection and trademarked “intel inside” branding.

Green: What are some of the other natural products you have experience with?

Lopez: We work with a range of some of the most popular nutraceuticals such as coenzyme Q10 and omega-3 fish oil to the more innovative natural products like resveratrol. We also work with vitamin D, and other immunity-based ingredients that can be enhanced using our delivery system technology to deliver greater benefits to the people that are taking those products.

Green: What is the technology and how does it work?

Lopez: I think it’s important to recognize our technology partner, Vesifact, in Zurich, Switzerland, who is the inventor of the VESIsorb® technology platform and serves as the scientific research, technical support, production, and product development arm of SourceOne and Geocann. We are very proud of this symbiotic relationship where our role at Geocann and SourceOne is to provide the commercial development, sales, marketing and strategic distribution infrastructure. We promote our partnership openly on our website and in our marketing materials because of their unrivaled leadership position in the global marketplace.

They have consistently been recognized as a top 10 global organization for health-related nanotechnology patent activity, ahead of many of the most well-known pharmaceutical companies in the world. It is an intellectual property portfolio that has been used to provide solutions to the most difficult product formulation challenges over the years in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and now cannabis applications. Together, our focus has been on delivering novel solutions in these diverse fields of use and product applications based upon VESIsorb® formulation technology.

Each active compound identified with its own set of formulation, absorption and bioavailability challenges requires a customized solution that allows the full potential health benefits to be realized from success in the lab to commercial scale up. This is the process and we have successfully delivered unmatched solutions for close to twenty years from coenzyme Q10 to now both psychoactive and non-psychoactive cannabinoid product formulations in a wide range of product applications.

We saw the exploding interest in CBD with our nutraceutical partners and demanding consumers worldwide but chose to start Geocann to keep the markets served separate. We were confident that the VESIsorb® technology would provide much needed solutions for CBD as a wellness product, but also adult-use and medical cannabis products regarding “fast acting” and “product stability” needs.

Green: What’s the problem in cannabinoid bioavailability that Geocann’s technology helps to solve?

Lopez: It is well-recognized in the scientific literature that CBD, THC and other cannabinoids, in general, show limited bioavailability due to their lipophilicity, poor aqueous solubility and extensive first-pass metabolism.

Our VESIsorb® technology was designed to address the poor bioavailability of drugs and natural bioactives like cannabinoids exhibiting poor water solubility but high membrane permeability (Biopharmaceutical Classification System: Class II compounds). The VESIsorb® technology is a lipid-based formulation that self-assembles on contact with an aqueous phase into a colloidal delivery system. This colloidal solubilization improves the transport of the cannabinoids through the aqueous phase of the GI-lumen to the absorptive epithelium, dramatically improving bioavailability.

VESIsorb® is typically characterized as a SEDDS (self-emulsifying drug delivery system). What’s unique about our VESIsorb® SEDDS is the long history of safe and effective use worldwide and the large number of products that, over the years, we’ve successfully developed. With decades of experience delivering novel formulation solutions, there is significant and valuable “know how” that we bring to each formulation challenge.  This “know how” allows us, for example, to develop cannabinoid formulations that provide lymphatic absorption pathway advantages in addition to standard gastrointestinal absorption, therefore optimizing therapeutic blood levels for maximum benefits.

Needless to say, there are various methods that attempt to address the poor cannabinoid bioavailability. Unfortunately, too often, companies make claims that they have water soluble cannabinoids but offer little evidence to validate their claims. The popular misconception is that some degree of water solubility will consistently translate to improved bioavailability. This is clearly not accurate. We know scientifically that pharmacokinetic performance is highly variable. A review paper I read recently comparing water soluble delivery system formulation types illustrated this fact. There was greater than an eight-fold difference in bioavailability amongst the various water-soluble formulations.

Green: Can you tell me some details about your global license with Vesifact?

Lopez: Our technology exclusivity is based upon given categories. So, when we say we have global exclusivity for nutraceuticals, that can be as I’ve already mentioned, omega-3, coenzyme Q10, or resveratrol as examples, and this business is managed by SourceOne. With regards to our global exclusivity for cannabinoids and terpenes– whether we formulate these ingredients to create a functional drink, or we’re creating a gummy, or creating a softgel capsule or powder-filled hard-shell capsule, or sublingual, or topical – all of those product applications are covered by ourexclusivity for the technology and is managed by Geocann.

The beauty of our technology is that we’ve already achieved success with all of those product applications. That’s one of the big advantages of our technology versus some other approaches trying to address the challenges of cannabinoid bioavailability.

Green: What kind of validation and clinical studies have you done so far in the cannabinoid space?

Lopez: We were the first to have stability data with creating our formulation in a soft gel capsule with CBD. We recently submitted to the European market for novel food application. We invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in proprietary safety studies that are required to achieve novel food status in Europe and FDA GRAS in the U.S. We have proprietary stability data as well as proprietary toxicology data from multiple, self-funded clinical studies. Many companies that submit for the EU novel food application are only referencing the existing scientific literature about the pharmacokinetics of cannabinoids, whereas we have our own peer-reviewed, published study. In our study, we compared our VESIsorb®-CBD formulation to the industry standard MCT Oil-CBD formulation in a crossover design where we were able to demonstrate how we could dramatically improve the bioavailability of CBD.

Green: Can you talk about the benefits of your technology with regards to bioavailability and onset time?

Lopez: When you start talking about onset time we move into a broader discussion relative to cannabinoids. We’ve been very successful with marijuana, especially as it relates to THC, because of the dramatic improvement in time to Tmax, and how much faster we reach Tmax than a standard THC formula. Our formulation is generally four times faster compared to standard formulations.

When it comes to area under the curve and Cmax, we show improvements of four to six times a standard THC or CBD product. Further, when we start looking at the differences between other studies that have been published, we show an even greater improvement based upon study comparisons to what other people have done, even compared to products like GW Pharmaceuticals’ Sativex Oromucosal Spray.

Green: Can you address the SEDDS formulation and liver metabolism?

Lopez: We’ve dramatically overcome challenges with the first-pass effect. We have also formulated our products to address lymphatic absorption. So, we’re coming at it from a number of different angles.

We disagree with people who talk about water solubility as an end-all be-all solution. When you look at the range of published studies, whether it’s nanoparticles or liposomal systems or micro-emulsions, they all are water soluble systems, but yet the data shows there’s dramatic differences in the real efficacy of those approaches, and what the actual improvement in blood levels are. Ultimately, those blood levels represent the efficacious nature of the products whether we’re talking about CBD, or talking about THC.

Green: As a Colorado-based company you work with cannabis partners across the US. Can you tell me about your relationship with marijuana product formulators and brands and how you structure your licensing agreements across state boundaries?

Lopez: In a recent article about the leading fast acting gummies, the two companies they focused on were Sunderstorm with the Kanha Nano gummies and Curaleaf with their Select Fast Acting Nano gummies. Both of those companies use our VESIsorb® technology. We’re very proud of our relationship and the success they’re having as leaders in most dominant states with that particular product application.

Onset time has always been a challenge with gummies. And we’ve dramatically improved onset. Actually, we’ve shown statistically significant improvements for all measured pharmacokinetic parameters in a recent peer-reviewed published study.  We demonstrated much higher total absorption in maximum plasma concentration (Cmax), total exposure [area under the curve (AUC)]) and the time to reach the peak concentration (Tmax).

We say powered by VESIsorb® technology the product is faster, stronger, longer.

Green: How does the experience differ from a standard oil- or isolate-based formulation?

Lopez: The only way that I can answer that question is we’ve had 100% success with the companies we work with in their initial trials. When someone tells me that a group of employees are going to try the product and they’re heavy users of cannabis and they are smokers, I think, “wow, you know, gummies have to be really successfully formulated for someone like that to be pleased with the high.” Then they come back and say, “that’s the best that I’ve had in four years!” and they’re totally blown away. That’s completely different than a peer reviewed published study, but for sure, that’s the kind of feedback and anecdotal evidence that we get. I think that’s why that application is growing so much faster now because we’ve overcome this onset issue.

Green: Do you give exclusive rights on a state-by-state basis?

Lopez: We’re very selective about who we work with. Exclusivity is always part of the discussion. But at the same time, it’s really more about protecting the investment in the people that we partner with and not cannibalizing a given market. So, there are some exclusive relationships in the U.S. and internationally, like Heritage Cannabis and Pathway Health Corp in Canada, but for the most part, I would say simply, we were very selective about who we do business with and open to new partnerships.

Green: What kind of support do you provide to your licensing partners?

Lopez: We provide 100% formulation and technical support. We provide the SEDDS and then they use their own legal, licensed cannabis and their own equipment. Our system requires no special equipment or investment in changes to their process. So, not only do we provide formulation expertise, but our system is really easy to use both in a lab environment as well as producing large scale commercial productions.

Green: What geographies are you in currently with the cannabinoid formulations?

Lopez: We are global in scope. We’ve been very fortunate to have success not only in the US and Canada, but Europe, Brazil and Australia as well. Our level of participation will vary whether we’re talking about medical marijuana, adult-use or hemp extract and CBD.

Green: If somebody is interested in learning more about your product or potentially becoming a license partner, how would they how would they reach out to you to set that up?

Lopez: If they went to our website, www.geocann.com, it’s pretty easy to reach us and I am grateful that so many companies are doing that.

Green: Great, thanks Jesse that concludes the interview!

Soapbox

How Rare Cannabinoids Will Impact Investing

By Maxim Mikheev, Dennis O’Neill
No Comments

There is a significant increase in demand for all cannabinoid products across the board—including CBD, THC, CBG and THCV—from recreational users, consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical companies. And the next great race is on for the hottest arrival to scientific cannabis therapeutics: rare cannabinoids.

Research shows rare cannabinoids are poised to be the future of cannabis investing, providing better health benefits in addition to impacting the pharmaceutical, CPG, nutraceuticals, cosmetics and pet care markets significantly. According to recent reports, the biosynthesis of rare cannabinoids will be a $25 billion market by 2025 and $40 billion by 2040.

The companies that will revolutionize this market are ones with the highest quality and lowest prices, which means that biosynthetic cannabinoid companies will be the leaders in investment and capturing market share. We will also see a major consolidation in this market amongst the grow, harvest and extraction companies, increasing efficiencies and driving down costs.

What are rare cannabinoids and why should we care?

Tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV)

Rare cannabinoids such as CBG, CBN, THCV, THCA and others have significantly better and more specific health benefits than just CBD on its own. Biotech companies like ours, Biomedican, which has a patent-pending biosynthesis platform, can produce pharmaceutical grade, non-GMO, bioidentical, synthetic cannabinoids with 0.0% THC at 70-90% less cost. Producing 0.0% THC means that rare cannabinoids can be added into nutraceuticals, CPG and cosmetics/lotions with zero changes in current cannabis regulations. Also, we produce the same exact product every time (not possible through plants), which is extremely important for pharmaceutical companies conducting clinical trials.

Why are rare cannabinoids important?    

The human body contains different cannabinoid receptors that help regulate critical processes, including learning, memory, neuronal development, appetite, digestion, inflammation, overall mood, sleep, metabolism and pain perception. This considerable involvement of cannabinoid receptors, critical to many physiological systems, underscores their potential as pharmaceutical targets.

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), just one of hundreds of cannabinoids found in cannabis.

Pharmacological research has uncovered several medical uses for cannabinoids, which bind to cannabinoid receptors. They’ve been shown to help with pathological conditions such as pediatric epilepsies, glaucoma, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia and have anti-tumor effects as well as promote the suppression of chemotherapy-induced nausea. This ongoing research is becoming more prevalent and has the potential to uncover therapeutic uses for an array of cannabinoids.

In addition to the medical field, other prominent sectors have adopted the use of cannabinoids. There is an increasing demand for cannabinoids in inhalables, the food industry and in hygienic and cosmetic products. Veterinary uses for cannabinoids are also coming to light. The use of naturally occurring cannabinoids reduces the need for synthetic alternatives that may produce harmful off-target effects. 

So how does this affect the investing market?

Where there is demand, significant and growth investments follow. All the major players from nutraceuticals, CPG, cosmetics and pet care companies are driving the demand for rare cannabinoids. We are seeing a major investment shift from commodity-based prices for cannabis and CBD to the new biosynthesis technology which offers significantly better health benefits and higher profit margins. Those unique qualities of rare cannabinoids open an enormous opportunity to create new drugs and food supplements for treating various medical conditions and improving the quality of life. This creates a massive global opportunity for all companies in these categories differentiating their products from competitors.

The structure of cannabidiol (CBD)

There will be big winners and losers in these markets, but at the end of the day, the highest quality and lowest cost producers will capture most of these markets. Biomedican has the highest quality, highest yields and lowest cost of production in the industry. Which we believe will make us the clear leader in the biosynthesis rare cannabinoid markets.

Which rare cannabinoid to invest in first?

Early reports indicate THCV (not to be confused with THC) could contain a variety of health benefits: it may help with appetite suppression/weight loss, possibly treat diabetes as well the potential to reduce tremors and seizures caused by conditions like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and ALS.

There has been an explosion of interest in THCV due to its potential health benefits. We are seeing major players in the nutraceutical, health food and pharmaceutical industries clamoring to add THCV to their product lines. Companies can now produce THCV through biosynthesis, creating a pharmaceutical-grade, organic, bioidentical compound at 70-90% less than wholesale prices. This is exactly what the largest players in the market want: a pharmaceutical-grade, consistent product at significantly less cost. The current prices and quality have limited THCV production, but new breakthroughs in biosynthesis have solved those issues, so we expect a tsunami of orders for THCV in 2021.

Molson Coors Joint Venture Selects Quicksilver Scientific as Technology Partner

By Cannabis Industry Journal Staff
No Comments

According to a press release published this week, Quicksilver Scientific, a nanoemulsion delivery technology company, announced a partnership with Truss CBD USA, which is the joint venture between Molson Coors and HEXO Cannabis.

Quicksilver is a manufacturer of nutritional supplements that uses a patent-pending nanoemulsion delivery technology. Their technology is what enables companies to produce cannabinoid-infused beverages.

Because cannabinoids like CBD are hydrophobic, meaning they are not water-soluble, companies have to use nanoemulsion technology to infuse beverages. Without this technology, beverages with cannabinoids would have inconsistent levels of compounds and they wouldn’t work well to actually deliver the cannabinoids to the body. Nanoemulsion essentially cannabinoids water soluble, thus allowing the delivery of cannabinoids to the bloodstream, increasing bioavailability.

Dr. Christopher Shade, Ph.D., founder & CEO of Quicksilver Scientific says they have perfected their nanoemulsion technology over the past decade. “CBD is not water-soluble, which creates challenges for manufacturers when attempting to mix it into beverages,” says Dr. Shade. “Our innovative nanoemulsion technology overcomes these challenges by encapsulating nano-sized CBD particles in water-soluble spheres that can be directly added to beverages. The result is a clear, great-tasting product with greater bioavailability, a measure of a compound’s concentration that is absorbed into the body’s bloodstream.”

The Veryvell beverage product line

Quicksilver is providing their technology to be used with Veryvell, the joint venture’s new line of non-alcoholic, hemp-derived CBD beverages. The beverage line is already available in the Colorado market. According to the press release, the three product offerings include: “Focus” (grapefruit and tarragon with ginseng and guarana), “Mind & Body” (strawberry and hibiscus with ashwagandha and elderberry) and “Unwind” (blueberry and lavender flavors with ashwagandha and L-Theanine).

Leaders in Cannabis Formulations: Part 1

By Aaron Green
No Comments

Natural cannabinoid distillates and isolates are hydrophobic oils and solids, meaning that they do not mix well with water. By formulating these ingredients using various technologies, companies like Caliper and Ripple have learned how to change the solubility properties of the cannabinoids. In addition, formulations can improve bioavailability and onset time of the cannabinoids.

Stillwater Brands is a cannabis formulation company based out of Denver, Colorado, leveraging proprietary technologies for solubilizing cannabinoids in water. Stillwater has a partnership with the Canadian company Green Organic Dutchman and will soon expand their THC line of products, Ripple, into Michigan. Their CBD product line, Caliper, is already sold nationally.

We spoke with Drew Hathaway, senior food scientist at Stillwater, about the Stillwater technology and aspirations for growth. Hathaway joined Stillwater in 2018 after engaging with them as a technical sales representative in his previous role at a food ingredients supplier.

Aaron Green: What trends are you following in the industry?

Drew Hathaway: I can mainly speak to the science side of the business since that’s where I operate, but I do have some insight into the marketing approach and some of the things we look at. We’re looking at traditional food and beverage trends, whether it’s beverage formats, with its unique ingredients that are going to be general flavor trends, which can definitely be very region-specific. One of the things we definitely look at, especially on the THC side, is dosage differences. What are people putting their dosages at? Are they doing a combination of cannabinoids or terpenes? Are they really using individual ingredients? I think that’s something that’s been fairly well established in the THC market, especially since you have the regulatory mandate of 10 milligrams THC being your max single dose.

Drew Hathaway, senior food scientist at Stillwater

When Stillwater first launched in 2016, our company started with lower dose products to provide microdose options. We focus all of our products on functional foods for consumers. It’s why we have three different options for every single one of our products. We have what we call the Pure 10 which is 10 milligrams of THC per serving. We have what we call the Balanced 5. That’s 5 milligrams THC, 5 milligrams of CBD. Then as well as our Ripple Relief, which is a 40 to one ratio of CBD to THC at 20 milligrams CBD and 0.5 milligrams THC. We provide a variety of options for people looking for different dosage levels. We have to look at all of those trends. Packaging trends are also high on our radar.

Aaron: How about flavors?

Drew: We recently launched additional SKUs for our Ripple gummies here in Colorado. We have four different options. We have a sour variety pack that contains sour watermelon, sour apple and sour peach. We also just launched peach cherry, kiwi apple and sour watermelon by itself — and all of those are at the five milligram THC per gummy dose. That aligns with the Pure 10 line as well. We also have been working on some new flavors for the 10 milligram THC quicksticks, which we’re looking to launch early next year. Then, like I mentioned earlier, we’re expanding into Michigan with the THC business, which has been a big goal for us and something that’s gotten a lot of effort behind the scenes.

Aaron: So Drew, how did you get involved at Stillwater?

Drew: I like to describe myself as a traditionally educated food scientist. I went to college and got my bachelor’s and master’s in food science and technology at Ohio State. And then I ended up at a really cool company that was a very large food ingredient supplier. I was technical support to sales for their team. Through that position, I covered the Colorado territory as well as California and I got to cover Stillwater as one of my customers providing technical advice on different products and ingredients that they were looking at. I got involved with Stillwater through that position, back in the early days when they were still trying to develop and figure things out. That would have probably been about four years ago. I was able to see from the sidelines and I was dealing with some other cannabis companies in the space here in Colorado at the time too.

I recognized very early on what they were trying to do by making cannabinoids water soluble and water compatible. It was not only extremely challenging, but also had a ton of potential if they were able to pull it off. At that point, they were still trying to figure out how this is going to work. How do we produce it? How do we sell it? How do we make sure that things are stable? Things of that nature. I got an inside look at Stillwater from the very start, back when there were really only a few people at the company. I would check in with them regularly as they needed help.

I always joked that they were my least important, most interesting customer and I mean that only because they were buying extremely small amounts of ingredients from us. From a sales perspective, naturally, my manager didn’t necessarily want me spending a ton of time working with them. From a personal interest perspective, I was like, “these guys are doing something really intriguing and if they can pull this off this has a ton of potential, so I want to help them however I can.”

I dealt with them in that sales capacity for about two years before they talked about expanding into the CBD space with the Farm Bill passing at the end of 2018. I recognized at that point that I think they had two scientists including Keith, our head of R&D, and I said “alright, that’s really ambitious. You probably need some help! I think it’s time for me to take the leap and see if you guys are interested in having me come on board.” Fortunately, they were and so I’ve been with the company a little over two years now.

Aaron: Can you explain at a high level what the Stillwater products do?

Drew: The base technology behind all of our products for Ripple and Caliper is essentially converting your fat-soluble cannabinoids, whether it’s CBD or THC, into a water compatible product in a process referred to as emulsification. What you’re essentially doing is taking CBD and THC containing oils, whether it’s a distillate or isolate, and you’re essentially breaking those fat droplets into extremely small droplets and then stabilizing them at that size. We make our own emulsion — the fat droplets are extremely small — then when you draw that down into a powder format and redissolve it into water, you are dispersing billions upon millions of fat droplets into your glass. Those droplets are evenly dispersed through the beverage so that you get the same amount of THC or CBD in your first sip that you get in the last sip. That’s really the core technology behind everything that we do.

Taking cannabinoids and making them water soluble is the base technology necessary in order to make something like a shelf-stable infused beverage. There’s no way that you’re going to take traditional distillates or cannabinoids and be able to make a beverage that is shelf-stable otherwise. It’s been really cool since joining Stillwater to learn and understand how that process changes the way that those cannabinoids are absorbed by your body. Emulsification changes things like the onset time, as well as the total amount of cannabinoids your body’s absorbing and using. That’s been something that’s super interesting to see through the clinical research that we’ve done with human participants through Colorado State University.

Aaron: Let’s say if you just take THC oil and put it into an infused product. What’s the difference between that and Ripple?

Drew: Some products formats, such as beverages, just aren’t possible with THC oil without an emulsification technology. As the old saying goes in science, water and oil just don’t mix. So, if you were to take a traditional THC distillate and try to add it to a beverage, that would just float on top as a big oil slick. When you took your first sip, you would essentially get all of the cannabinoids in your first gulp which not only makes precise or partial dosing impossible, but also would taste absolutely terrible. Emulsification makes those infused beverage products possible and stable over a normal one-year shelf life or potentially longer.

Emulsification also changes the way that your body absorbs those cannabinoids, which is something that we’ve definitely put a heavy emphasis on and have really been able to validate with clinical research. I think that’s one of our biggest differentiators versus our competitors. We’re definitely not the only ones in the water-soluble cannabinoid space, but from my understanding, I think we’re one of the few companies that have actually executed human-based clinical trials (vs rodents) through a third-party university and been able to prove that these cannabinoids are detected in your bloodstream as fast as 10 minutes after consumption. We measured those results directly against an oil-based control, where you’re not going to get a peak absorption until maybe 60 to 90 minutes after consumption. What this research found was that not only was our product absorbed much faster, but it also enabled a significantly higher amount of the cannabinoids to actually make it into the participants’ blood stream where it can be used by their bodies. We also found the type of food emulsifier makes a significant difference in absorption – not just emulsion size, counter to common belief.

We use the analogy, “It’s getting a better bang for your buck.” The main purchasing consideration for a lot of edibles consumers when you go to a dispensary is “what is my cost per 10 milligram dose of THC?” That’s one of their key purchasing parameters, especially for your lower budget customer. What’s great with Ripple is one milligram of THC consumed through our Ripple technology is not really equivalent to one milligram of an oil-based product and that your body is actually going to absorb a higher percentage of it. And therefore, you’re going to get more of an effect, whether you’re looking for a medical effect or whether you’re looking for more of a recreational therapeutic effect. It also improves the consistency of that experience. So, with oil-based products, you could have the same products multiple different times and based on what you recently ate, you might get a higher or lower absorption rate or a faster or slower absorption rate. It’s also in the consistency of the experience and I know that from our market research of our consumers of Ripple products here in Colorado since that’s been in the market for a few years now. That’s the number one reason why people really trust our brand is because they can count on getting a consistent experience every time for the same dose.

As we all know, with the THC market and edibles market being newer in general, that’s most people’s biggest fear, especially if you’re a new consumer of THC — you obviously don’t want to consume more than what you can handle as far as getting higher than you want to be or anything like that — So consistency is a really, really key aspect for us and something that I’m definitely proud that we can provide that for our consumers.

Aaron: What does your product look like when you dissolve it into a liquid – let’s say something clear? Is the resulting mixture clear or cloudy?

Drew: We do have liquid concentrates, especially in the Caliper side of things, but with our powders, it kind of billows in as a cloud when you add it to a clear liquid. You can almost think of it like when we pour creamer into coffee: you see the cloud expand and then slowly fill out the cup and then be fully mixed in. Whereas with our products if you pour it into clear water, and you’ll see this white cloud form and then disperse. The final solution is generally a little bit cloudy depending on how much water you add it to.“I’ve been fortunate to be the lead developer for those products for Caliper and for Ripple, and flavor work is definitely something that never gets old.”

Aaron: How are customers using your products?

Drew: For a long time, we’ve had a variety of products in the market, some of which are still in the market, and some of which we’ve pulled since then. The key product for us has always been the Ripple dissolvable powder. It’s an unflavored, unsweetened powder that comes in a little sachet packet that you can tear open just like you would any other product and add to really anything. With its water compatibility, there’s really not a single product that you can’t add it to. It’s been really cool to see through social media, and in general, consumer engagement is electric and is kind of viewed as a novelty. The initial reaction is “Oh, I can take this little powder, put it in my eggs and now I have infused eggs!” It’s been great to see the creativity that our consumers have. We’ve seen it put in such a wide variety of products that literally you can make anything into an edible. I think that’s one of the coolest aspects of that product and why it’s been so successful.

One of the things we did realize pretty fast is that for a lot of people, the convenience and the consistency of the experience was a main driver for why they were purchasing our products. A lot of our real consumers just take that packet apart, ripping it open and pouring it straight in their mouth. It’s the fastest and most convenient way to consume the products, pretty much anywhere. We dug into that with our more recent launch of Ripple Quicksticks. And then we added some flavor, we added a little bit of sugar and sweeteners to make it a consumer-friendly experience where you get a really enjoyable flavor. It’s still just as convenient to consume by just ripping the packet straight open and pouring it in your mouth.

Aaron: It sounds like there must have been some interesting internal product development testing!

Drew: Yeah, definitely. That’s a fun one. I’ve been fortunate to be the lead developer for those products for Caliper and for Ripple, and flavor work is definitely something that never gets old. It can be frustrating at times, it’s definitely not the easiest thing to do. We’ve looked at traditional berry flavors, citrus flavors, as well as weird, kind of out-there flavors, to see what we like and what we think will work with our consumers.

Aaron: What states do you operate in?

Drew: Currently, our Stillwater THC business only operates in Colorado. That’s essentially the genesis of all the companies (Ripple, Caliper) is Stillwater being here in Colorado. We’re excited to announce that we’re expanding to Michigan next year. That’s something that we’ve all been working pretty heavily on developing and getting ready to go. That will be our first expansion of the THC brand to a different state.

We do have a licensing and distribution agreement with The Green Organic Dutchman (TGOD) in Canada. They produce our products using the same technology up there and license also under the Ripple brand name. So, it’s great to see the presence that we’ve been able to expand up there.

Then with Caliper on the CBD side of things with Caliper Ingredients and Caliper Consumer. We operate nationwide for that based on the more recent rules with the 2018 Farm Bill. For me, especially working across all of those business units, it’s really interesting to see the different business approach between your target CBD consumers and your target THC consumers because they’re really different markets. There’s definitely some overlap, but you’re targeting a different demographic to a certain degree. We keep those decisions in mind when we’re choosing how to market and what flavors to use and what products to make. So that’s been really interesting for me to see the behind-the-scenes discussions.

Aaron: I saw on your website, you’ve got consumer options via the dispensaries. Do you work with any infused product manufacturers on a licensing basis or partnership basis?“I’m super excited to continue to see how the medical research will continue to evolve.”

Drew: I’d say the majority of them are definitely on the CBD side for Caliper, partly because the regulatory environment of CBD just is a little bit easier to kind of engage other customers and to sell products across state lines and things of that nature. We do have some partnerships with some of the companies here in Colorado. I’d say the main one that we’ve promoted externally is with Oh Hi infused Seltzers based out of Durango, Colorado. It’s been a great agreement where we provide our base technology via liquid Ripple formulation that they can then infuse into their seltzers. They’ve done a great job with those products and it’s definitely a partnership that’s been mutually beneficial.

Aaron: What are you personally interested in learning more about?

Drew: For me, the whole appeal of joining the industry was research. With prohibition and decades of those restrictions preventing true research there are so many unknown questions that still need to be investigated. I’m super excited to continue to see how the medical research will continue to evolve. I think we’ll get better clarity on the efficacy of individual cannabinoids versus different combinations and ratios of cannabinoids. The entourage effect is something that’s pretty heavily talked about in the industry. I do think there’s some research to support that. I also think there’s still way more unknowns than things that we actually know. So, I’m super interested in seeing how our understanding of everything will continue to improve over time.

I’d love to see the medical research eventually expand into what synergistic benefits exist between cannabinoids and other bioactive ingredients such as turmeric, catechins, antioxidants and other plant-based ingredients that have gotten a lot more interest through the medical research in the last decade.

Then one of the things I’m always excited about being on the science side of things is we’re still investigating the general compatibility of cannabinoids with various types of food and beverage products. That goes not only for ingredient interactions, but also factors like pH, water activity and moisture content. Even packaging definitely plays a role in cannabinoid stability for a variety of products. There’s also a variety of production processing technologies that still need additional investigation, whether you’re talking pasteurization, for beverages, or retort for canned products or newer technologies like high pressure processing (HPP). So, I think the most exciting thing for me, and the reason I was really willing and interested in joining the industry, is there’s so much to learn. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to explore. I think as an industry the better we conduct this research, the better off we’ll all be.

Aaron: That’s the end of the interview! Thanks Drew.

Advancements in Extraction & the Growth of the Concentrate Category

By Dr. Dominick Monaco
No Comments

Due to quick progressions in legalization, today’s cannabis industry bears little resemblance to the industry of five years ago. As the cannabis space gains mainstream acceptance, it resembles more “traditional” industries closely. In turn, how we consume cannabis has changed dramatically within this novel legal framework.

A brief visit to a cannabis dispensary quickly illuminates just how much the industry has changed in the past few years.

Within the dynamic of modern cannabis, perhaps no vertical has seen the same advancements as cannabis extracts. It’s precisely the growth of the concentrate category that has given rise to the many branded products that define the legal market.

To give a clear picture of how advancements in extraction have stimulated the concentrate category’s growth, we put together this brief exploration.

Standards & Technology

extraction equipmentBefore legalization, the production of cannabis extracts was a shady affair done in clandestine and often dangerous ways. Especially concerning BHO (Butane Hash Oil), home-based laboratories have long since been notorious fire hazards. Even more, with a total lack of regulation, black-market extracts are infamous for containing harmful impurities.

In the few short years that cannabis has been legal in Nevada, Washington and other states, extract producers have adopted standards and technology from more professional arenas. By borrowing from the food and pharmaceutical industries, concentrate companies have achieved excellence undreamed of a decade ago.

Good Manufacturing Practices

One of the essential elements in the extracts vertical advancements is the adoption of good manufacturing practices. According to the World Health Organization website, “Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) is that part of quality assurance which ensures that products are consistently produced and controlled to the quality standards appropriate to their intended use.”

When adult-use cannabis was legalized in markets such as Colorado, cannabis companies were able to come out of the shadows and discuss GMPs with legit businesses. In doing so, they implemented professional controls on extract manufacturing in accordance with “quality standards” of state regulatory agencies.

Supercritical CO2 Extraction

As cannabis businesses adopted GMP from other industries, extract producers also embraced more sophisticated technology. Of these, supercritical CO2 has pushed the cannabis concentrates vertical into the future.

IVXX processingAccording to the equipment manufacturer Apeks Supercritical, “CO2 is considered to be a safer method of extraction because the solvent is non-volatile. The extract is purer because no trace of the solvent is left behind. It is also versatile and helps protect sensitive terpenes, by allowing cold separation.” By deriving methods from food production, supercritical equipment manufacturers have given cannabis companies a viable option for the commercial production of extracts.

Supercritical technology has helped push the concentrates vertical forward by providing a clean and efficient way to produce cannabis extracts. Nonetheless, supercritical CO2 equipment is highly sophisticated and carries a hefty price tag. Producers can expect to pay well over $100,000 for commercial supercritical CO2 extraction setup.

Products

Just as standards and technology have evolved in the cannabis extracts vertical, we have also seen products rapidly mature. Notably, the legal environment has allowed manufacturers to exchange ideas and methods for the first time. In turn, this dialogue has led to the development of new products, like isolates and live resin.

Isolates

Just as the name implies, isolates are concentrates made from a singular, pure cannabinoid. In today’s market, CBD isolates have grown increasingly popular because people can consume pure CBD without ingesting other cannabinoids or plant materials, including the legal 0.3% THC found in hemp.

Isolates are made by further purifying cannabis extracts in the process of purification, filtration and crystallization. As seen with other concentrates, isolates are used as the base for many cannabis products, such as gummies.

There is also growing interest in CBG isolate, which is another non-psychoactive cannabinoid when consumed orally.

Live Resin

The cannabis concentrate live resin has taken the industry by storm over the past few years. Live resin is a form of extract that is originally sourced from freshly harvested and frozen cannabis plants. The primary selling point behind this extract is the fact that fresh flowers produce much more vibrant aromas and flavors than dried cannabis. Interestingly, this pungency is tied to the preservation of terpenes in live resin.

Just a few of the dozens of various products types on the market today.

To make live resin, producers “flash freeze” fresh cannabis plants immediately after harvest. Valuable cannabinoids and terpenes are then extracted from the fresh, frozen plant material using hydrocarbon solvents. This whole process is done at extremely cold temperatures, ensuring no thermal degradation to the precious and volatile terpenes.

In lieu of these intricate steps to preserve the flower and extracts, live resin has continuously gained popularity. Namely because vaping with live resin is the best way to sample fresh cannabis terpene profiles in its most authentic fashion

It is amazing to see how much cannabis extracts have grown and progressed with legalization. Due to such amazing advancements in standards, technology, and products, the concentrates category has exploded on the dispensary scene. In today’s market, flowers have been largely sidelined in favor of concentrate-based products like gummies. These products now adorn dispensary shelves in beautiful packaging replete with purity and testing specifications.

It’s an often-overlooked fact that the purity standards of the legal extracts have made reliable cannabis brands possible in the first place. You cannot develop a cannabis brand without consistent products that customers can rely on; all things considered, it can be said that advancements in extraction have not only stimulated the concentrate category but the entire industry as we know it today.

Heat-Not-Burn: A Q&A with Mike Simpson, CEO and Co-Founder of Omura

By Aaron Green
No Comments

Heat-not-burn is a non-combustion technology consisting of a heating source and either an oven that the user packs cannabis into or a stick pre-filled with cannabis. The cannabis is heated to a lower temperature than a combusted joint or bowl to create an aerosol that the user inhales. Heat-not-burn in this way is distinct from traditional vaping where a liquid or oil is heated to become a vapor and inhaled.

Omura is a design company that has developed a platform product for the heat-not-burn market.

We spoke with Mike Simpson, CEO and co-founder of Omura. Mike co-founded Omura in 2018 after an international design career where he spent much of his time in Japan working with consumer products.

Aaron Green: Mike, what trends are you following in the market?

Mike Simpson: I’m always tracking trends in the heat-not-burn space. Because of my background, I know that the tobacco industry inspires a lot of the technology in the cannabis space. If you look at all the vape pens, that technology was initially developed for big tobacco, which then later was adopted by cannabis. I’m always looking to stay educated on what’s happening in the tobacco industry, as I know it’s directly tied to my work in cannabis.

I’m also looking at what’s happening all over the world with legislation. I’ve been studying it for years, but this past year has been phenomenal. Seeing five new states go to some level of legalization, the federal law and new states legalizing cannabis in the 2020 Election. I believe the Biden/Harris victory will have a major impact on the industry, however we still have to see what happens with the Senate. These next couple of years are going to be very interesting to see how things shape out for cannabis.

Aaron: What are you personally interested in learning more about?

Mike Simpson, CEO and co-founder of Omura

Mike: I am interested in learning how the world is going to behave next year with this new life that’s been thrusted upon us. How effective is the new vaccine going to be? How are people going to retrospectively look at this year, and the lifestyle that they used to have before going into COVID? How much of it’s going to become permanent? How much of this Zoom life will we continue to enjoy? In the future, will office spaces become obsolete? How much will we still be using home deliveries? Do we actually want to go to restaurants again? That’s what I’m very interested in learning about is how human behavior and the world will change because of what’s happening right now.

Aaron Green: How did you get started at Omura?

Mike Simpson: Great question. I moved to Japan as a designer working for Lego and set up their design office for Lego toys. After Lego, I started working instead with Nike and Adidas designing performance sneakers and apparel for a couple of years until I found Big Tobacco — which is where my Omura story begins. I rapidly found myself in a position where I was creating new technologies, for the consumption of nicotine and tobacco. While working on an early project, I was asked if I knew any science fiction writers. Thanks to Lego, I just so happened to know Syd Mead, the designer for popular sci-fi films including BladeRunner, Tron and Aliens. So, I called him and we worked on a project which was aimed at setting the future of the smoking industry. Obviously, this was a brilliant project for someone like myself to get involved in. We came up with several scenarios that depicted the future of what tobacco consumption would look like, and each of them essentially included vaporization. This was before the vaporization days which made it kind of a difficult sell. I spent many years working on where we could use existing technologies in order to execute some of these scenarios. Ten years later, I moved to California, and I started studying the cannabis space for Big Tobacco which ultimately led me to Omura.

Aaron: Can you give me a reference point on the date when you were back in California?

Mike: I came here eight years ago, and I was in Japan pretty much 10 years prior to that.

Essentially what I realized when I got to California was that cannabis was perfect for heat-not-burn because of all the cannabinoids and the terpenes. You heat it up, and you get all of the good properties out of it without the need for combustion. There were already hundreds of products in the market, which validated that people love doing it.

However, there was a ritual: you needed to buy the flower, grind it, pack the device, select the temperature and then use the same mouthpiece repeatedly. And it doesn’t stop there. When the session is finished, you dig out the used flower with a metal spatula or brush. After every 10 or 15 times you have to clean it with rubbing alcohol to get rid of any existing residue from those sessions. This is just a big messy job with a massive amount of inconsistency and variability. For me, it was mind blowing that people would even go through this procedure. With Omura, I knew we needed to simplify that process. Our product comes with a pre-filled flower stick with an exact dose, that you place in the device very simply. You then use the stick as the mouthpiece and when you’re finished, throw the flower stick in the trash. It’s compostable and biodegradable. So we eliminated all of those pain points.

Aaron: Great! Where are you guys based out of?

Mike: Venice, California.

Aaron: So, what makes the Omura vaporizer different from other heat-not-burn products? You mentioned you have the disposable cartridge. Is there a design philosophy around it that you can talk more about?

Mike: Omura comes with 12 flower sticks in child-proof packaging. What makes us different is that we have our proprietary flower stick and device that work together. With our heat-not-burn technology, you get all the terpenes, but when you set fire to it, as you would with other products, you mask that with smoke. Our product is different from anything else in the market, because it has simplified the user experience through efficiency, user interaction and also through design as well.

The other founders come from deep design and technology backgrounds, designing technologies for Apple and Philips Electronics, so it was an important focus for us with Omura. Our newest device, the Series X was designed by Michael Young, a world-renowned industrial designer who has built an impressive portfolio of innovative products.

The Omura Series X

With Omura, we’re bringing sophistication of the design world into the cannabis world. It’s not just about simplifying the experience and making a great kind of efficient method of consumption, it’s also about creating something for everyday use that is beautifully designed and easy to use.  

Aaron: The Series X is Omura’s latest device. Can you tell me what changes you’ve implemented to make it better than the first version?

There are a few differences between the Series 1 and Series X: First, the new design fits in the palm of your hands so it’s discreet. It comes with a USB-C charging base that automatically connects with magnets. We’ve also improved the efficiency of the oven. The first device boiled 94% of the cannabinoids, this one now boils 99%. We’ve increased user-efficiency, by removing the button from the Series 1 making it so all you have to do is put the flower stick in and the device starts automatically. Additionally, we wanted to give users an option between a hotter or cooler experience so we added an extra heat curve, as we recognize that some of our CBD users prefer more of a terpene experience.  

Aaron: Can the user modify that with an app?

Mike: It is a very simple switch on the bottom of the device that allows you to toggle between the higher and lower temperature curves

Aaron: Okay, cool. Can we talk about your supply chain a little bit here? Do you manufacture everything in Los Angeles? Or do you have partners? 

Mike: Everything is designed in the US and manufactured in China. Which is fairly common throughout the industry. Shenzhen is well known for making products for the vaping industry. We create empty tubes filled in a batch production process. All the flower is grown here in the US. To clarify, we aren’t a plant-touching company. We don’t have a cannabis license. When it comes to THC, we have partnership deals. We work with select cannabis brands which is how we are able to sell in dispensaries. On the other hand, our CBD model is split. We have two brands of our own. Libertine, which is more of a male-focused Gen Z brand. Then we have Oriel, which is more of a wellness brand, catered to women.

Aaron: So how would an aspiring brand get on your platform?

Mike: Good question. Any brand or company who is interested in partnering with Omura can contact us through our website, www.omura.com, on Instagram @Omura or via email: hello@omura.com. We would then assess them to see if they’re a good fit. Currently we’re looking to span quite a large kind of demographic as far as appeal. So, if these prospective partners are in a territory, whether it be California or another state, have good market share and high-quality flower, then we would be very open to having a conversation.

Aaron: That’s the end of the interview — thanks Mike!

Important Security Considerations When Designing Cannabis Facilities

By Heather Bender
No Comments

The cannabis industry is growing so quickly that even COVID-19 can’t slow it down. Before the pandemic, the industry amassed $13.6 billion in U.S. legal cannabis sales in 2019 – a figure that is expected to more than double to $30 billion in the next five years, according to New Frontier Data.  In states where cannabis is legal for medical or recreational use, dispensaries have been deemed necessary, essential businesses – especially when it comes to calming stress and anxiety in our ever-changing times.

Cannabis legalization and newly budding dispensaries have expanded across the U.S., which may come with an unfortunate counterpart – a higher incidence of crime. Despite lower prices in states that have legalized cannabis, as compared to states where it is still illegal, theft has run rampant across grow operations, warehouses and, most often, dispensaries.

Heavy-duty security doors at the front of the dispensary block sight access and provide a visual deterrent.

Dispensaries can be targeted more frequently. Robbers may perceive them as an easy target, because they are businesses that have larger amounts of cash on hand. Many dispensaries only accept cash because payment processors and financial institutions aren’t willing to work with them. This is primarily because cannabis is still deemed an illegal substance under federal law, and the actions of financial institutions are governed by federal, not state, laws. Once the Secure And Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act is approved, cannabis businesses will be able to work more easily with banks, in turn reducing the amount of cash on site and erasing the dollar signs in opportunistic thieves’ eyes.

However, cash isn’t the only high thieves seek when they break into dispensaries. There’s also the product itself. Protecting it – and providing peace of mind to the facilities’ owners and occupants – is a concern for dispensaries, grow operations and warehouses. Robbers are motivated by the opportunity to make even more fast cash through reselling the product found onsite.

To eliminate such easy targets, security requirements for the cannabis industry are a necessity. They are also involved, complicated, and vary from state to state. A number of security specifications apply between state laws and local ordinances. Inventory must be properly surveilled and managed at all stages of transportation and storage. Any discrepancies in inventory can result in large fines and other penalties. To aid in understanding security compliances, the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), a national trade association, recommends that start-ups obtain attorneys to guide businesses through their state’s laws and regulations.

This is why, especially for new business owners, it is critical to consider the best, most advanced security solutions – especially when it comes to doors and points of egress – that are easily integrated into buildings during the design phase. These solutions protect the products, properties, and people throughout the cannabis supply chain.

Understanding State Security Regulations
While there are no federally recognized security requirements for the cannabis industry, there are similar requirements across all states that have legalized cannabis, including:

  • Maintaining strict access control throughout the facility – this is especially important for grow operations and warehouses
  • Functional alarm systems
  • Documented standard operating procedures
  • Video surveillance systems – many states mandate very precise requirements, such as length of storage time and even video resolution specifications
  • Notifying appropriate regulatory agencies immediately or within a strict timeframe after a security incident or theft
  • Securing all records and record storage

While these are common, state-mandated security requirements, it is critically important to know and understand all rules, regulations, and laws concerning the industry within the business’s specific state. Making sure the business is compliant with all aspects of state laws for security and preventing violations, including the hefty financial penalties that can accompany them, is key.

States require cannabis facilities to implement sophisticated security features for several reasons. One of the most obvious is the fact that the industry supplies a high-value product and is a cash-intensive business. Integrating security features into the building can be a challenging task for architects and designers. To help tackle these challenges, manufacturers have introduced products to the cannabis industry, creating easier, more effective and aesthetically pleasing security solutions.

Integrated Designs For High Level Security
Security shouldn’t be a constraint when considering design aesthetics. Certain elements can be discretely tucked away, including cameras and security doors by way of specifying a concealed rolling door, conveniently disguised in the ceiling during operating hours. These doors can even close under alarm eliminating the need for manual intervention. Other security measures, such as bullet resistant glass, are hidden in plain sight.

Rolling doors like this one can be conveniently disguised in the ceiling during operating hours.

Untrustworthy employees, smash-and-grab thefts or meticulously planned heists mean secure building design is of the utmost importance. In order to have the most effective security, there needs to be design vision – a clear intent for incorporating advanced security into the facility, whether visible or not.

Suggested security measures include video surveillance around the outdoor perimeter of the property as well as inside the facility. Physical barriers, such as specialized entrance locking systems – including fingerprint-scanning biometric technology – and security doors that may also include intrusion detection and automatic closure systems are recommended. All systems may be paired with 24/7 visual monitoring by security personnel.

Many state regulations also require restricted access to specific areas within dispensaries, grow operations and warehouses, with employee names and activities logged for reference. These necessary measures aid in inventory monitoring and control, further reducing the likelihood of internal theft.

When specifying building security, it’s important for architects to consider what type of building they are designing. There are differences in providing security for dispensaries versus warehouses and grow operations. Dispensaries and storefronts are frequently out in the open and in locations that are well-known to consumers. Warehouses and grow operations are usually tucked out of the way, rarely publicized, and less noticeable.

Rolling Grilles And Doors Deter Dispensary Theft
With a high-value product and cash on hand, dispensaries in particular have unique security challenges. And because they are retail businesses, egress and fire codes must be strictly adhered to, in addition to special security regulations.

Rolling grilles can be an effective deterrent against dispensary theft

In light of this, security doors require special consideration. They are necessary to provide secure protection against theft but shouldn’t distract from the architectural vision of the building or interior design.

Rolling security grilles are the ideal solution to protect the counter inside the dispensary and may also be ideal for the front of the store. They fit in small headspaces where there is limited ceiling room and can be easily concealed when not in use.

Even heavy-duty rolling doors used to protect the glass storefront of the dispensary and prevent intruders from entering the building’s dock area can be hidden when not in use. If building code allows, architects may specify a rolling door that coils up into the door’s header, residing behind an exterior soffit. These robust security doors’ lift-resistant bottom bars also can be obscured from sight.

Heavy-duty security doors at the front of the dispensary block sight access and provide a visual deterrent. They give the building a secured look when in use, but heavy-duty rolling doors don’t need to be imposing to customers during the dispensary’s operating hours.

Robust Visible Protection For Grow Operations And Warehouses
Grow operations and warehouses usually opt for more visible security doors to deter criminal activity. They also have different design considerations because of building layout and production needs. For instance, larger grow operations house plants and supplies which require heavy equipment to move throughout the facilities.

A heavy duty steel rolling grille

Heavy duty rolling security doors can be made with up to 12-gauge steel with interlocking slats and tamper resistant fasteners – making them stronger than standard garage doors. They provide high-end security at loading docks and limit access to restricted areas inside.

Rolling doors can also be used to block employee access to off-limits areas common in grow operations and warehouses. Because they are heavily reliant on utilities and infrastructure, such as water mains and humidity and temperature controls, warehouses and grow operations are ideal applications for rolling doors. If unauthorized personnel with ill intentions access these utility areas, it could spell disaster with ruined crops and damaged or unsafe products – turning into substantial financial losses. From a design standpoint, these doors do not need to be concealed. In fact, their visibility signals restricted access areas and hints at the security measures taken to protect these facilities.

Enhanced Security Features
Whether designing a dispensary, a grow operation facility, or a warehouse, rolling doors may be paired with automatic protection features to enhance the building’s security and help workers feel safe. These automatic closing systems allow the security doors to be immediately activated by a building alarm or the push of a panic button in emergency situations. The doors also feature advanced locking systems – some of which are hidden in non-traditional locations – providing further tamper resistance.

Some rolling door manufacturers offer in-house architectural design groups to guide architects and designers in choosing the ideal security doors. These groups can address and solve any design dilemmas that arise during the project. Every rolling door is built to a specific opening, making each product unique to that area of the project. Because of this customization, manufacturers can meet virtually any specification.

Meeting Insurance Requirements
Selecting the correct rolling door along with other advanced security features aids in meeting insurance requirements. Each insurance company has individual minimum-security conditions in its policy. Many insurance companies will not provide theft insurance if cannabis businesses do not have adequate security or cannot demonstrate they have it.

Planning Leads To Integrated Protection
The technical and legal aspects of securing dispensaries, grow operations, and warehouses can be overwhelming and, at times, confusing. Legal counsel, state agencies, industry associations, and manufacturers encourage new cannabis businesses to use them as resources as they unravel the nuances of the industry’s security regulations.

By combining robust security features such as video surveillance, proper access controls, rolling doors or grilles and automatic closure systems, cannabis facilities can meet state and insurance requirements and deter theft. With thoughtful design consideration and planning, these security features also have the capabilities to seamlessly blend with interior and exterior design aesthetics.

Former Vice Chancellor of Germany Joins Swiss Company Board

By Marguerite Arnold
No Comments

Dr. Philipp Rösler, the former federal Minister of Economics and Technology and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2011-2013 has just joined the board of Swiss cannabis company Pure Holding AG.

The move is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it signals how political currents are moving in Germany, if not Europe beyond that.

To American eyes, Pure Holding looks like a very organized, corporate farm and cannabis manufacturer, organized to produce and test high quality cannabis, extracts and white label products for the coming storm of interest – no matter where European regulatory winds may temporarily go on hemp extracts.

Geopolitics At Play
The fact that the farm is on the Swiss side of the border is also a signal that many Germans (at least) expect the EU to drag its feet on what kind of animal even low-THC and THC-free cannabinoids are while consumers vote with their pocket books across the continent and buy online imports.

The fact that Rösler is politically associated with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) of which he was also chair, is another indication that Germans in general are deeply upset about the slow movement of the CDU party (the Christian Democratic Union) on this issue (just like many others).

The FDP, like all other parties (except the extreme right wing Alternativ für Deutschland or Afd) has been much more forward about cannabis reform. That said, the party currently at the helm of the ruling coalition (CDU) has also been repeatedly accused of dragging its feet on the issue – no matter that medical cannabis was approved here as a therapy mandated for coverage by public health insurers.

The difficulties however that most patients have had to go through is not over. Reform has come here, but still for most, in name only.

The fact that Rössler was also a cardiothoracic surgeon before his stint in national politics is also a sign that the medical community is taking notice of the health effects of cannabis. That he was also federal minister of health of Germany (between 2009 and 2011 in Angela Merkel’s second cabinet) is also a clear indication that the topic of more cannabis reform is on the agenda at home in Germany, including Europe beyond that.

Even if, right now, certainly compared to what is developing in the UK, on a much slower boat to at least commercially accessible, low THC reform.

Philipp Rösler, former vice chancellor of Germany

The Current Debacle Over Hemp In The EU

It is unclear what the fate of hemp is in the EU at present. With the region’s administrators coming to a legally non-binding and decidedly non-scientific holding pattern on “CBD,” (namely that it is a narcotic) it could very well be that the Swiss, English and importers from the rest of the world bring in flower, extracts and products that the region cannot keep out, but is not quite copacetic about embracing, just yet.

That said, with major health food producers now stocking hemp seed extract on the stores of major German grocery stores, it is clear that the worm is turning, one former politician and now board member at a time.

Why The Fuss Over Hemp At All?

The bigger debate is actually a scientific one. It boils down to parsing cannabinoids from the same plant correctly, while also understanding the role that they play together.

That this is now happening, roughly twenty years after the discovery of the human endocannabinoid system – and the recognition that the human body itself creates cannabinoids that are mimicked by external phyto (or plant sourced) cannabinoids, is a victory, even if a late one.

It also signals that at a high level, the debate about cannabis as a drug if not a tool for maintaining overall body wellness, is not abating, but indeed proceeding even as the debate stymies politically at a country-by-country if not regional level.

What Will Reform In The EU Look Like?

While the analogy is not exactly the same, and for a variety of reasons starting with the fact that European countries are sovereign and independent states of Europe and not part of a single federal country, it appears that cannabis reform will look very similar to the progress of the same as it has unfolded so far in the United States.

Leaders in Extraction & Manufacturing: Part 2

By Aaron Green
No Comments

Cannabis extraction and manufacturing is big business in California with companies expanding brands into additional states as they grow. This is the second article in a series where we interview leaders in the California extraction and manufacturing industry from some of the biggest and most well-known brands. Click here to see Part 1.

In this week’s article we talk with Matthew Elmes, director of product development at Cannacraft. After cutting his teeth in academic and industry research, Matthew was approached by Cannacraft leadership to bring a new perspective to their product development efforts. The interview with Matthew was conducted on July 22, 2020.

Next week, we’ll interview Joaquin Rodriguez, chief operating officer at GenX BioTech. Stay tuned for more!

Aaron Green: Hi Matthew, and thank you for taking the time to chat today, I understand you have a busy schedule!

Matthew Elmes: Thanks – yeah, last week was pretty insane!

Aaron: Well, I’m happy we found a chance to put this together. Let’s start from the beginning. How did you get involved at Cannacraft?

Matthew Elmes, director of product development at Cannacraft

Matthew: I did my Ph.D in biochemistry at Stony Brook University on cannabinoid intracellular transport and metabolism. I then did a post-doc with Artelo Biosciences in endocannabinoid system modulation. While I was doing my post-doctoral research, Dennis Hunter, co-founder of Cannacraft, had learned about my work and reached out to offer me a position.

Aaron: Awesome, that’s a great feeling when people are reaching out to you! The next questions here will be focused on product development and manufacturing. What is your decision process for launching a new product?

Matthew: We do our best to anticipate what the market will want. A lot of our new product development comes from improving our current products. Things like improving stability, shelf-life and reducing bitterness. For brand-new products and technologies, we first get a lot of feedback from the marketing and sales teams and will then go into a planning session to decide what is feasible and what is not prior to moving forward.

Aaron: Do you personally get involved in manufacturing? Tell me about your process there.

Matthew: I do get involved in manufacturing. My main inputs are figuring out how much cannabis oil to use to hit a target potency around the size of a batch. This is the type of thing I do for all our beverage products like HiFi Hops, our Satori line of infused edibles, and the various gummy products sold under our brands Absolute Xtracts and Care By Design.

Aaron: Are you developing new products internally?

Matthew: For the most part we develop everything internally. We are very vertically integrated here at Cannacraft and we extract all of our oil in house. I don’t do the oil extractions myself. Most of our stuff is supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, but we have hydrocarbon and cryoethanol extraction facilities opening soon. For our gummies, we use distillate oils for the best flavor and for our droppers/vapes we use full-spectrum oils for a more sophisticated array of effects.

Aaron: In product development, what does getting stuck look like for you?

Matthew: Getting stuck happens a lot! You know, strict regulations make it challenging to source ingredients. Foods we’d like to source for a product are often too high in pesticides or heavy metals for the cannabis regulations. What’s good enough for the grocery store is very often not good enough to be compliant in the California cannabis industry. Fruits that are totally free from pesticides are hard to find. Our edibles brand Satori Chocolates actually might be the only player in the entire California cannabis industry that uses real whole fruit in our products rather than something artificial or a processed fruit paste. We actually had to source our strawberries from Italy to find ones that were both compliant in metals/pesticides and tasted good enough to meet our high standards! The same sort of challenges apply to sourcing biomass for oils.

Aaron: If you get stuck is it usually the same place? Or is it different each time?

Matthew: We’re so diversified. We have lots of different products. The process for each one can have its own issues. The problems you encounter with cannabis beverages are not the same ones that you’ll encounter with vapes, edibles, topicals or sublinguals, etc. We are one of the oldest players in the California cannabis industry (CannaCraft was founded in 2014, well before regulated recreational cannabis was a thing) so we have the advantage of working on all these issues for years longer than most of our competitors and we have largely figured out all the major ‘kinks’ already. A big part of it is also that we have assembled a great team of food scientists, chemical engineers, chemists, legal and regulatory experts, all with diverse specialties that allows us to quickly address any new ‘stucks’ and be fully confident in all of our products.

Aaron: Feel free to answer the next question however you like. What does your magic helper look like?

Matthew: I would love a magic helper! What would a magic helper look like to me? I think my magic helper is a recent undergrad with lab experience. I would have them take care of a lot of the quality and lab day to day activities. My responsibilities often make me too stuck to the computer screen where I don’t have time to get to all the experiments that I’d like to do…a trained magic helper could physically perform those experiments for me!

Aaron: OK, and now for our final question! What are you following in the market and what do you want to learn about?

Matthew: I am personally really interested in yeast grows and cannabinoid synthesis from biological organisms. We stick to only natural plant-derived cannabinoids for all our products, but it’s a new field that’s just fascinating to me. I also think that minor cannabinoids will have a bigger place in coming years. In particular I have my eye on THCV, ∆8-THC, CBG and THCP. THCP is a phytocannabinoid that was just discovered a year ago and exhibited very potent effects in preclinical models, but no one has been able to produce and purify it in appreciable amounts yet. We already manufacture and sell a ∆8-THC vape cart under our ABX brand, but for the others keep an eye out for new product announcements from us that are on the horizon.

Aaron: Well, that brings us to the end of the interview Matthew, this is all awesome feedback for the industry. Thanks so much for your time and insights into product development in the cannabis industry.

Matthew: Thanks, take care!

3 Ways IP Security Cameras Can Help Cannabusinesses Comply with COVID-19 Health Requirements

By Jeremy White
No Comments

The cannabis industry, like many others, felt the effects of the stay-at-home orders issued in March in response to the COVID-19 healthcare crisis. While medical cannabis companies were considered “essential” in most states, many recreational dispensaries had to close their doors, or pivot to a curbside pickup operations model. According to the State of the Cannabis Industry 2020 report, following a two-week spike in mid-March, as consumers stockpiled product ahead of stay-at-home mandates, sales took a temporary downturn.

The industry rebounded in a big way, however. The report notes that, since April 20, cannabis sales have steadily increased, and are, in fact, up approximately 40% from 2019. But while medical and recreational dispensaries are now open to the public and thriving, it’s far from business as usual.

Like any other retail store, cannabusinesses must follow local- and state-issued health and safety mandates designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Complying with these new requirements can be difficult for business owners and management teams on a normal business day – never mind in today’s climate, where demand for cannabis products continues to soar.

Turning to Technology

With more health regulations to follow than ever before and stores experiencing a consistent increase in daily foot traffic, it’s no longer realistic to expect managers to manually monitor every employee and customer to make sure guidelines are met. For example, it’s difficult to manage social distancing within the store – but there are commonly lines outside of cannabusinesses, where social distancing and mask-wearing precautions also need to be followed. Wouldn’t you rather have managers spend their time on customer service and initiatives that will deliver business value, rather than spending time making sure people are following safety protocols?

Technology can help mitigate these new health compliance challenges – and you may even already have the solution deployed: Internet Protocol (IP) security cameras. Often implemented by businesses as a security tool, IP cameras are now also an effective way to ensure employees and customers are following health and safety protocols.

Most IP cameras are equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) that can analyze information in real-time and make split-second response decisions. In the context of health compliance, they can be trained over time to recognize when requirements are not being followed and immediately alert the appropriate managers. This means managers only need to address violations, rather than observing everyone all the time, and they can resolve compliance gaps as they’re happening. In other words, AI takes on the compliance burden for you. And, as an added bonus, many AI-enabled surveillance systems give managers the ability to pull up live video feeds from their smartphone, so they can conduct compliance checks remotely, at any time. This is especially helpful to managers covering multiple stores (suddenly, they can be in more than one place at a time!).

Here are three specific ways IP security cameras can help dispensaries and other cannabusinesses ensure compliance with COVID-19-prompted health guidelines:

  1. Social distance monitoring

Six-feet social distancing rules are now the norm across the U.S., and IP security cameras are able to measure the space around employees and customers to detect when the six-foot rule is violated. For example, some systems place a ring around each person, and the ring’s color changes when people come within six feet of each other. This capability can be helpful when trying to do things such as supervise the line to get into your store, manage your checkout queue, or monitor the distance between customers browsing in store aisles.You can use IP security cameras to create a healthier and safer work environment

  1. Occupancy management

In many states, organizations must follow orders that restrict occupancy to 50% capacity. Rather than having an employee at your front door tallying the number of people going into and out of your store, IP security cameras can do the counting for you. With this capability, you can control foot traffic and keep the number of shoppers within defined occupancy requirements – without having to allocate personnel to do the task manually.

  1. Face mask detection

AI-enabled IP security cameras can also help businesses comply with mandatory face mask orders. The technology can be trained to detect employees and customers who aren’t wearing face masks or other required personal protective equipment, and then alert appropriate management personnel.

A Dual Purpose – Security and Compliance

IP security cameras now have a dual purpose. Beyond simply helping organizations protect their premises from crime, they now also empower them to ensure compliance with health and safety requirements. You can leverage the technology to remediate compliance issues in real-time and demonstrate to public officials that your business remains in compliance with all health mandates. Most importantly, you can use IP security cameras to create a healthier and safer work environment – and, in these uncertain times, this is a certainty you can count on.