How Automation Helps Cannabis Companies Grow From Seed-to-Sale
A Look into Each Step of the Value Chain with ATG Pharma
Cannabis spans many distinct parts of consumer-packaged goods product creation. From choosing genetics and growing cannabis from seeds or seedlings; to harvesting and preparing plants for product formulation; to extracting cannabis oils into various products including cartridges, capsules, topicals, and more – careful processes and regulation guides every step. And from there, branding, packaging, marketing, and distributing the final products to the many people in the jurisdiction that buy cannabis is a whole other side to the cannabis CPG lifecycle.
As the cannabis industry expands, both market and legal demands change, and businesses need to pivot and change their processes accordingly. Automated cannabis equipment helps cut down on labor costs and streamline the production flows across every part of creating cannabis products.
ATG Pharma machines help cannabis businesses optimize production so people can focus on adding the human touch, while robots perfect the automated processes.
Plant Tracking & Harvesting
Metrc and other cannabis compliance frameworks require some strict standard operating procedures. Plant tracking is a big part of trying to legitimize a once entirely illegal industry. Cannabis plants grown at legal cannabis facilities need to be tracked, seed-to-sale, with the weight data uploaded to Metrc (or other compliance frameworks). Often, cannabis companies rely on pen-and-paper to track plants, which results in plenty of human error, costly quality assurance mistakes, and potential problems with compliance.
WayFast cannabis cultivation scales streamline the harvesting and weighing of cannabis plants, with compliant but easy-to-use hardware. When growing en-masse, every second counts. By being able to weigh a plant every 3 seconds, growers can harvest and weigh 1200+ plants per hour – saving an incredible amount of time. In fact, if we break it down into cost-labor hours, cannabis producers save up to 72 hours for every 10,000 harvested plants. In essence, WayFast limits compliance and plant tracking problems cultivators and head growers face when harvesting cannabis.
WayFast cannabis cultivation scales are no-touch, mobile, RFID NTEP-Certified, and come in a hanging scale and a block scale version for different harvest styles. WayFast helps cannabis companies scale their grow operations at their own pace, while simplifying weight compliance checks.
For those not-so-pretty cannabis flowers that get sent to extraction, there are other ways to maximize team production time and processes.
Extracting Cannabis & Filling Confident
Extracted cannabis that gets formulated into various products comes with its own procedures and processes that take time to get just right. After cannabis is extracted into oil formulations, it is filled into the appropriate packaging. If you’ve ever seen manual distillate and live resin filling processes, it can be messy, time-consuming, and entirely inefficient.
ATG Pharma focuses on creating automated robotic solutions that streamline the filling processes– whether RSO syringes, vape cartridges, or other liquid and semi-liquid products. The Automated RoboCAP System provides a filling system to meet the needs of companies of all sizes, whether a start-up company just breaking into the cannabis industry, or a large-scale and established operation looking to expand its product line.
With its autofill technology, RoboCAP can meet all the current and future filling needs of cannabis operations with one robot. As production demands grow, the RoboCAP can help cannabis operations with a consistent and accurate dispense each time, keeping up with increasing production volume. The RoboCAP system provides cannabis operations with the flexibility needed to pivot production at any time and makes it easy to upgrade and change product lines. By being able to go from filling to capping in a short time frame, with no potential of leaking and clogging, and a high throughput capacity, the ROI is evident within the first few runs. For Ayurcann Inc, this meant filling up to 5000 vapes a day, and easily being able to pivot to white label bottle filling for tinctures. Combining the RoboCAP with the MonoPress and the ALR-1000 Labeler, the full in-house production helped Ayurcann scale to make well over 3 million in revenue in 2021.
For smaller, non-industrial-sized clients, the ML-1 filling system is the perfect solution to get production started. This filing system is the fastest solution for new businesses or the perfect first step in introducing a brand-new product line. The ML-1 is ideal for operations who need filling less than 1000 units a day. The unit is compact and very easy to set up, simply plug in and calibrate, and the ML-1 is ready to start filling bottles and tinctures.
Packaging & Distribution
The packaging and distribution aspect of cannabis plays a leading role in ensuring that products are market-ready and up to standards. With the rising demand for medical and recreational cannabis products for consumption, there are now many versatile products on the market such as smokable flower, oils, extracts, and edibles—all needing to be packaged and labeled with regulation compliance. Packaging is too important to be overlooked and is one of the most difficult things to do in the cannabis industry.
As the industry evolves and regulations concerning cannabis packaging and labeling are constantly changing, growers and marketers must ensure their packaging solutions meet the laws of their jurisdiction and find the right packaging partner. Cannabis operations are showing a great interest in automation to expand their companies and product lines while being more profitable and efficient. ATG Pharma’s automated packaging solutions work with cannabis operations to keep pace with the flow of production lines and increase production tolerance while guaranteeing accurate capping, counting, and labeling every time.
ATG Pharma is a leader in regulatory compliant filling and packaging equipment for the cannabis industry and helps cannabis operations by working around their delivery schedules. With automated packaging equipment, cannabis operations can rest assured that all their labeling and packaging needs can be met with ATG Pharma to bring their products to the market faster.
6Pak Solutions, the contract packing arm of ATG Pharma, has access to all ATG Pharma’s resources, support, and equipment expertise. 6Pak Solutions, a Canadian co-packing company, is helping processors, brands, and Licensed Producers keep up with product demand increases with filling, labeling, and packaging services. They offer companies packaging and distribution services with top-of-the-line automation equipment and processes and can also offer secure storage solutions for companies who need a holding site for their products and overflow who have limited in-house capacity.
6Pak Solutions can fill vapes, capsules, tinctures, topicals, and gummies and can help processors, brands, and Licensed Producers get their products to the market promptly to keep up with delivery deadlines. 6Pak helps companies in the cannabis industry with production overflow, volume increase, and new product introduction, helping them keep up with the demands of the industry. 6Pak solutions is also able to aid in distribution by providing direct to market service which includes packaging and releasing the products instead of shipping them back to the client, saving companies time.
Product growth and sustainable expansion
Cannabis cultivators are turning to technology and automation to cut costs and keep up with product demands as many companies are scaling up. Automated sorting and extraction equipment have already proven their value and worth in streamlining post-harvest processing, helping companies at the industrial level. These technological advances in manufacturing equipment are leading to new opportunities for product growth and sustainable expansion, helping companies to increase production.
ATG Pharma is changing the way cannabis operations are increasing production with the most innovative technology in the industry. With the new build and price tool, cannabis professionals can rely on ATG Pharma for their production needs and find the ideal setup that aligns with their production goals. After selecting what type of product needs to be filled, the batch size, and desired daily output, ATG Pharma can recommend the best set up and connect cannabis companies with a sales representative to review pricing.
With versatile filling and packaging equipment along with their build and price tool, cannabis operations looking to increase production can trust a partnership with ATG Pharma. Each of their in-house teams work together with cannabis operations to contribute to successful product growth of orders and custom projects. ATG Pharma’s equipment is designed for dynamic and fast-growing production, as they are leaders in both quality equipment and service, helping companies streamline their productions efficiently and effectively.