Cannabis Equipment News

This week, Joe Barnard, chief academic officer, and Daniel Kalef, VP for higher education, discuss Green Flower's cannabis education platform that offers everything from one-off training sessions to educational programs at nine universities across the United States. The programs offer students the ability to become certified in cannabis cultivation, business, law and policy and healthcare.

The company started out as a direct-to-consumer educational portal, trying to educate people on the benefits of cannabis and remove the negative social stigma. Green Flower has since evolved into an educational hub that white labels cannabis industry business certifications for partner universities.

Each program includes three, eight-week courses that offer a mix of online learning as well as project work, including growing a plant.

The rigorous programs offer a high-quality curriculum to a previously untapped market. Since early adopters Florida Atlantic University and Northern Michigan University began offering the program, seven more have come online.

While you would expect the partner universities to be located in states where cannabis is legal, one of the most popular programs is at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville. The Platteville program has the third highest enrollment and its located in a state where cannabis remains illegal.

Student demographics vary, but since the programs launched, initial interest has come from adults looking to change career paths and industry workers looking for a leg-up in career advancement. Green Flower is building a network of businesses to help place students who complete the program.

Acceptance and buy-in has been an uphill battle for Green Flower as universities and even students push back against the stigma of being affiliated with a "weed school." However, the popularity of the programs, and the likelihood of further legalization in 2021, will continue to change their minds.

This week, MCR Labs President Michael Kahn and Director of Business Development Jonathan Wani discuss how they protect cannabis consumers and help manufacturers improve — and protect — their businesses.

The company started in 2013 when Kahn left his role as a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry to create a public health-centered lab that provides accurate cannabis data.

Kahn wanted MCR to be more than a traditional lab, which often operate like a “dark box'' where samples come in and data goes out. For Kahn, it's not simply a transactional relationship with clients; they often help manufacturers contextualize data to gain a better understanding of what is happening in the facility.

As the industry continues to evolve and mature, the company's mission of public health has not wavered: create an environment in which fewer contaminants are found in cannabis products.

In samples, MCR finds everything from microbiological contaminants — bacteria and mold — to heavy metals and pesticides, as well as residual solvents and concentrates. What's encouraging, however, is that more products are passing through the lab, which saw a more consistent pass rate over the last three to four years.

MCR Labs is based in Framingham, Massachusetts, but recently opened its first lab outside of its home state. In January, the company began accepting and testing cannabis product samples for Pennsylvania-based medical marijuana licensees at its Allentown facility.

MCR was the first independent cannabis testing lab certified in Massachusetts, and the company says data accuracy and integrity will remain a top priority as it expands into additional markets.

This week, Chris Parrington, founder of Cannapliant Consulting and general counsel of Boustead Securities, joins the Cannabis Equipment Podcast to discuss progress in the Minnesota market, industrywide compliance problems and how to fix broken social equity programs.

This week, Jesse Elkins, founder of Grow Industries, discusses how he became one of the most sought-after designers of cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facilities.

Much of Elkins' story is being at the right place at the right time. When he graduated high school in Washington State, he enrolled in refrigeration school to become an HVAC professional. At the same time, the state legalized medical-use cannabis. A few of his friends started small home grows, and he helped them off with HVAC as side jobs. However, he soon began receiving referrals, and the side job snowballed into a business. In 2007, he founded ClimaGrow, a company that specialized solely on climate control for indoor cannabis gardens.

By 2015, the company grew to more than 20 employees. In 2014, when the recreational cannabis market was legalized, Elkins was perfectly positioned as the only expert in the market. He landed every job, and his business transformed from a basement grow specialist to managing industrial grows.

In 2016, Elkins founded Grow Industries. While ClimaGrow focused on climate control, Elkins wanted to design and build the entire cultivation factory. He landed some of the biggest names in the state and went on to create some of the most envied facilities in the state, including operations at Wonderbrett and Bountiful Farms.

After 20 years in the business, Elkins has seen many changes as the industry has evolved and fine-tuned his approach to facility design. Elkins wants to be the Henry Ford of the cannabis industry. While Ford didn't invent the car, he essentially created modern manufacturing and put out a better product faster, using automation.

Four years ago, nearly half of his business was retrofitting new buildings designed and built incorrectly. The jobs included complete tear-outs at dozens of facilities, mounting up to much wasted time and money because fledgling companies hired mechanical engineers without industry experience.

The other half of Elkins' business was retrofitting old buildings to suit cannabis operations. With old buildings come a legacy of problems. Elkins recalls one client who purchased an old shop from around the 1930s. His calculations were correct, and the dehumidification set, but during the last few weeks of flower, the facility experienced huge humidity spikes, and Elkins was flummoxed. He discovered that the slab under the building was only two inches thick. Side note: The slab should be six inches thick, at minimum four inches. As a result of the shotty slab, the facility pulled groundwater through the concrete and ruining the grow.

Elkins says that it is always better to build a facility from the ground up, but he understands that sometimes you have to make an old building work. For any retrofit, he advises ripping the building down to the studs, sealing the concrete floor and sanitizing the entire facility -- it's impossible to know the contaminants, insects and mold that remain from the previous owner.

While Elkins started in Washington, he now lives in Arizona. He has built facilities from Washington to Boston and around the country, including 18 months in California.

Last week, Grow Industries was acquired by GCorp, a small management and consulting services company owned by the Gilder family in New York. Elkins says the acquisition will help him grow the business by taking day-to-day business operations off of his plate. He also plans to work on cannabis-industry-specific new product development.

This week, Harrison Bard, co-founder and CEO of Custom Cones USA and DaySavers, is back on the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss where pre-roll manufacturers still need help and why his company joined the new Science of Smokability study.