Cannabis Equipment News

This week, Bryan Wilson, co-founder and president of Environmental Living Industries (E.L.I.), discusses his journey from an overseas government contractor to the driving force behind an industrial hemp fiber processing startup. Wilson's wife, Candice, was a pediatric emergency nurse. A few years after the couple was married, Candice became incredibly ill, suffering from several autoimmune di...

This week, John Davis, CTO of Entexs , discusses his move from the oil and gas industry to the helm of an engineering and fabrication company focused on end-to-end extraction systems.  Entexs (pronounced "en-techs") was founded with the sole purpose of providing custom engineered extraction solutions for the cannabis industry. The company assembled a team of machinists, fabricators and e...

This week, Jeremy Luciano, founder and CEO of GHS Industries — formerly Global Hemp Solutions — tells the incredible story of his journey to the cannabis industry.  GHS conceptualizes, designs, builds and installs everything from buckers and drying systems to harvesters and extraction systems. Although the company works in the hemp sector, it is a food-grade manufacturer that also serves other ind...

This week, Ash Ganley, CEO of GrowRay Technologies , discusses his collaborative manufacturing R&D effort to create patented LED lighting solutions for cannabis cultivation. Ganley is the former CTO of NOBO, a small, vertically integrated multi-state operator based in Boulder, Colorado. During his time at the cultivator, he observed the fractured, isolated nature of cannabis cultivation produc...

This week, Ben and Vinnie Celani, co-founders of High Life Farms , discuss their operations in California and Michigan — and continued expansion. The brothers take a divide-and-conquer approach to operations, with Vinnie overseeing sales and marketing and Ben leading the cultivation side of the multi-state operator (MSO). High Life primarily conducts cultivation, manufacturing and distribution in...

This week, Josh Malman, vice president of cultivation at Jushi Holdings , discusses how he fell into cannabis. As a student, Malman studied international horticulture, and even spent a semester abroad building systems to provide cheap water to local farms in Africa.  His focus on greenhouse production horticulture eventually led him to a position with The Clinic in Colorado as it was starting up i...

This week, Donna Wamsley, Director of Research and Analytics at SōRSE Technology , discusses her role at one of the leading emulsion technologists in the industry, as well as the many difficulties in working with cannabinoids in the food and beverage industry. Cannabinoids (like THC and CBD) offer a sensory experience that can vary. Dosage control is difficult to make reliable and repeatable, as w...

This week, Dr. David Cunic, CEO and founder of UCS Advisors , discusses his life as a medical professional and serial entrepreneur. In the industry, he's known as "Dr. David," and he's been a cannabis advocate since 2009 — "before it was cool to be in cannabis." As a doctor of physical therapy and pain management, he is an advocate for the benefits of medical marijuan...

This week, Bella McCreary, president and CEO of High Maintenance Trim Co. talks about her transition from the banking industry to leading a company that provides onsite harvesting, bucking, trimming and packaging services. McCreary has several years experience working with cultivators of all sizes. She's overseen trimming operations for harvests as small as 12 pounds as well as clients with r...

Hosted by David Mantey. This week, Mike McDonald, president of Ammonite , discusses his fascinating path to the cannabis industry following careers in cycling and outdoor adventuring, as well as stint in Taiwan, where he moved after college just to learn Mandarin. Ammonite was spun out of Jetty Extracts , one of the largest concentrates and vapes companies in California. Jetty’s product developmen...

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 mo...

This week, Sannel Patel, the senior vice president of engineering at Ozone Solutions , discusses how his company designs and manufactures custom products that use "lightning in a box" to sanitize cannabis operations. The company started in odor remediation, primarily targeting hog farms — which have a pretty notorious scent. The company has since gone on to create more than 400 ozone gen...

This week, Lezli Engelking, founder of the Foundation of Cannabis Unified Standards (FOCUS) discusses why she left her successful career running a dispensary to create an organization dedicated to developing cannabis-specific good manufacturing practices.  As Bloom Dispensaries went from single-digit employees to a staff in the triple digits, Engelking realized that the Arizona company desperately...

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. Th...

This week, Jack Naito, president of Luna Technologies , talks about why he left a career as an R&D engineer at Boeing to design and manufacture cannabis extraction equipment. Luna specializes in hydrocarbon extraction. Its IO Extractor is a patented, automated system that can process up to 25 pounds of plant feedstock per hour to produce high-quality, craft extracts.  While many companies try...

This week, Shawn Honaker, the owner of Yeti Farms, discusses life on his organic outdoor cultivation facility in Pueblo, Colorado. Honaker’s farm was the first large-scale outdoor cultivation facility licensed by the state. Honaker has an eclectic background, with stints as a financial planner and salesman, before he started his own oil and gas business, sold it, and retired as a 30-year-old milli...

In this exclusive interview, Cullen Raichart, CEO and founder of GreenBroz, discusses how he designs and manufactures equipment to help usher cannabis companies into a larger automated landscape. Raichart started in the industry as a grower, but he quickly realized that he had “brown thumbs.” However, he was a design engineer by trade and found new opportunities to make machinery for friends and f...