Marijuana Business Magazine March 2020

Marijuana Business Magazine | March 2020 106 enough space away from the walls,” Shroyer said. Parts break. Seals need to be changed. So machines should be arranged with enough space for employees to work around and on them. “We make sure we give the staff adequate space,” said Joel Ruggiero, co-founder and chief horticulture officer for C3. “If not, they’re tripping over each other.” But C3 still tries to manage the use of the space and not build the labs bigger than they need to be. “Everything breaks down at some point,” Towle said. “So you’ll need to be able to fix things.” In Towle’s perfect scenario, the extraction equipment would have enough space around it for a small forklift to pass by in case a piece of equipment needs to be lifted. That’s not strictly necessary, he said, but at least 3 feet around the machines would be a good compromise. Compartmentalization Separate lab workers take raw material and run it through the extractor, then manipulate the extracted material, dry and store it, so it’s important to consider how those spaces interact with each other. Towle opts for compartment- alization, meaning each stage in the process occurs in a separate, sealed room. “If you have a room where you’re grinding flower, you don’t want that in the same room as finished oil,” he added. The ground flower could easily fly into the finished oil and ruin it. The rooms at Shroyer’s Revolution Global are all separate, and each stage is completely sealed. The company uses doors with coded keypads that restrict access to employees who are permitted within each department. “We want to make sure that nothing would come back in,” he said. Scalability Real estate doesn’t often come cheap, but not hav- ing enough space to grow the busi- ness if it succeeds is also not ideal. Shroyer said leaving room for scaling up is more important if you’re in a state that doesn’t allow vertical integration. “So far, we’ve only operated fully integrated, so we’ve just built specific to the amount of material that we’re going to be producing,” he added. Rungta echoed that, saying his company isn’t trying to overbuild its new facilities.  “We’re trying to be efficient and smart with our capital spending,” he said. MedPharm has tried to leave room for expansion as the company progresses. Towle also recommends building infrastructure such as enough electrical outlets to accommodate future expansion. “You don’t want to be so crazy that your facility payments are too high,” Towle said. “But you’ll never be sad about having too much room.” BestPracticesInExtraction | Bart Schaneman Bart Schaneman is a reporter for Marijuana Business Magazine. You can reach him at barts@ mjbizdaily.com . Making sure plants are easy to access will help with workflow when transferring rawmaterial for extraction. Photo Courtesy of C3 Ankur Rungta Courtesy Photo Tyrell Towle Courtesy Photo