Here in Ohio we have a dearth of processing facilities and my friend who is a farmer and talented guy has been growing high quality CBD bud the past few years. One day we are talking and he says that a rep from the Dep. of Ag. said “if you really wanted to make some money you would start a processing facility”. I immediately jump on this idea and begin to look into some options. I have a quote from a Chinese company for basically everything you need to make high quality distillate, albeit slowly because the centrifuge can only do 6.5 pounds of biomass at a time, and the distillate portion is a 5L system.
Am I nuts for wanting to take out a loan and buy this equipment and get licensed (around 30k shipped)? I see a lot of hate on this thread, especially to those who only do one portion of the business, but I’d like to make a processing plant more in favor of the growers, making small batch artisanal quality stuff for them for a lower price than what is being currently charged here by competitors. We have been looking at options for locations the past week and have found a lot of great places, with more to come. I would love to schedule some calls with people in the business and just soak in as much information as possible. My first post, long time stoner, first time caller.
Everything was sounding alright til this part. Choose your vendor and equipment wisely. With the amount of used domestic equipment floating around, id avoid that if I could. @scisolinczack@scisolinc could help out I’m sure. I have a bunch of used equipment too. @Killa12345 for new domestic equipment
The best value add from processing would possibly be terpene isolation from your friend’s material.
The cannabinoids have already raced to the bottom so unless Ohio has some rules against importing CBD I wouldn’t expect to offer that at a discount relative to the big lab competitors.
If you buy a custom 5L short path from me ($4000 no electronics) I’ll include a recipe how to isolate terpenes from hemp for free.
With the crash in CBD isolate prices from $3000 to ~$300 over the past couple of years you can likely find far better second hand equipment on the domestic market.
As someone who worked for a CBD company trying to get an industrial scale facility built that never broke ground due to the aforementioned crash I’d advise you to carefully do your math to see if it is indeed a worthwhile venture.
Say it takes you a week to get enough oil to run your 5 liter and you fill it up. That’s like 3 liters. It sells for 300 but your going to undercut to move the product so say 200. That’s 600 dollars a week before costs. Let’s say you double that output and make 1200 before costs. That’s over half a year to get your initial capital investment back unless you’re doing conversions. Then your subject to the law changing.
Literally if you have 30k go buy as many Toyotas Hondas or lexus from the early 2000s used in good shape that is a desirable model and sit in them bitches for a year. That a way better investment. Used cars i just read were up 50% last year. I heard Patrick bet David say that used cars grew at a faster rate them bitcoin. I think he meant for the year 2021.
It is supply and demand. We’re in a shortage of new cars and China is buying nice used cars and shipping them there. Feels like everyone convinced us global warming is bad, buy electric, all while those same countries that encourage us to do that buy up our gas guzzlers.
We switch to electric semis and China plans on buying all the diesel ones. How does that do anything but increase our operating costs?
Run numbers. Run them ten more times each time you run it will sound like a great plan.
But then use the search bar and look at the prices people who have networked for years in that space are getting.
I agree with terps being viable but you have to be good at what you do and how you store market and sell. At all steps shit can go wrong. Processing unless you’re about to process an acre a week isn’t worth the tears.
Talk to me about infusion where you extract a whole plant, strain-specific product directly into carrier oils. No solvents = lower costs, and this process excels with quality input. Infused infused oils can hit high potencies (10% with MCT) and are ready for packaging/formulation into soft gels, tablets, salves, gummies, nanoemulsions, and edibles–everything but vapes, really.
My company sells single-operator equipment that infuses oils with up to 40 lbs of biomass per day. We also do test and production batches for interested parties – for example I’m finishing up a 3-week run of 320 lbs of hemp that is going to turn into about 30 gallons of MCT infused to 5% cbd.
The wholesale market for infused oils is arguably more nebulous than that for wholesale cannabinoid (cbd distillate, isolate) market but consider that we will sell those 30 gallons for nearly $30k, which our retail client white labels for nearly five times that cost (and even higher for retail). So I think there is an opportunity for the grower that wants to vertically integrate their operation of turning small-batch, high quality cannabis into retail products.
I have focused on optimizing the infusion and decarboxylation processes the past couple years but now am turning towards formulation. I received a proof-of-concept batch last week confirming infused oils can be nanoemulsified into H2O soluble products from Industrial Sonomechanics and I’m optimistic about the contacts I am pursuing for gummy & tablet formulation too.
I’d check the box of “nuts.” Grew amazing hemp in Ohio and it didn’t work out. Save yourself the headache and either buy isolate for the low or just go the other way. Hemp is not the worth the trouble.
@impurejelly I don’t know what your proximity or willingness to drive to the Indianapolis area is, but I’ve got a connection there who is able to extract a half ton a day to W/D crude using cold alcohol. PM me if you’d like his contact info. AFAIK he doesn’t have distillation capacity in house but if you’re considering this, you can get set up with a 5L (or lager) short path for under $4k pretty easily and toll a pretty large amount of biomass into crude with the remaining $25k you think this project is going to cost, and you won’t have to deal with any unexpected import/freight/forwarding fees, equipment delivered not as advertised, weird voltage requirements, broken/damaged/DOA equipment, poor after sale support and other issues some of my clients have run into with “cheap” Chinese extraction equipment.
Also I run an ethanol extraction lab in northern Colorado, our current tolling rate is $2.85/lb to W/D crude and $4.90 to distillate with pretty good efficiency, I wouldn’t want to still be paying for equipment right now given the incredible drops the market for toll extraction and hemp extracts and derivatives have taken over the last 2 years.
