Accurate real-time testing plays a broader role in extraction best practices than licensed producers may think. It eases key production challenges, informs improved processes and helps extractors tailor their products.
As of February, 2023, the cannabis industry is facing external financial challenges, and extractors are operating within tight profit margins. When dealing with external business threats, the best path forward is to optimize and streamline internal points of production. For extractors working within the cannabis industry, this path forward is guided by rapid and reliable cannabinoid potency testing.
Operational opportunities
When extractors finetune their processes at each stage of production, it saves them time and money. To do that, they need to understand and focus on how much THC is in their extract every step of the way.
They need accurate testing that doesn’t hold up their timelines. Ekidna gives LPs that visibility in sub-ten minutes.
These real-time results help them:
- Adjust machine settings for steam, pressure and heat to achieve desired levels of THC
- Make informed decisions about their processes
- Side-step operational bottlenecks while waiting on lab results (between one and two days for on-site labs and up to two weeks from offsite)
- Increase production capacity and run shorter cycles using their current equipment
- Obtain time-sensitive potency results to “blend and extend” extracts without having to wait two weeks for a certificate of analysis
Accurate testing isn’t just important at the end of the extraction process but plays a vital role in keeping it going. The ability to process more extracts in shorter timeframes without additional equipment is money in extractors’ pockets.
When extractors don’t have the ability to test quickly during each stage of their process, their extract sits in its machine. This is the only way to protect it from oxidation. The problem is this means valuable machinery is lying in disuse — as are valuable team members! And because new product can’t go into the machine to advance from a previous production phase, this creates a backlog.
Luckily, less than 10 minutes is all LPs need to get accurate results with Ekidna — so they can keep their operations moving.
Financial opportunities
Frequent testing is a reality of extractors’ operations. Fast, self-directed testing helps them cut costs each step of the way.
It’s about more than paying less for individual tests. The ability to obtain near-instant results lowers related operational expenses, providing additional value to extractors by:
- Increasing machinery efficiency and throughput at each stage to increase final output extract to sell
- Reducing idle personnel costs and diminishing returns on equipment expenses
- Confirming potency of “blended and extended” extracts in time to sell to clients requiring exact THC percentages.
- Decreasing the cost of lab testing, with Ekidna tests priced at half the cost of a third-party potency test.
- With about 10-25 tests needed a day, this adds up for extractors!
- Removing the need to spend on building and maintaining an on-site lab!
The economics of testing goes beyond the price of tests because inefficient testing practices create a ripple effect of operational costs, lost revenue and reduced yield.
Because the industry testing standard has been HPLC technology, many producers rely on off-site labs due to the high costs associated with operating an in-house HPLC. There is no need to rely on off-site testing during production when accurate alternatives exist. Health Canada states that the testing for Certification of Accreditations, which must be done through a third party, should mimic the final product. Many extractors struggle with these off-site costs and delays across the whole of their process when they only need to rely on them at the final stage.
With a solution like Ekidna designed to be used by non-technical operators during production, extractors can relieve costs related to testing and operations across their process.
Qualitative opportunities
With Ekidna’s real-time, accurate and portable testing solution, Licensed Producers have the ability to do their own potency testing anywhere, anytime which results in:
- Extracting the highest possible potency yield at every stage of their process with fewer passes
- Receiving THC and other cannabinoid potency results in sub-ten minutes
- Conducting as many tests as desired to adjust processes for the highest product quality
- Prevented oxidation and sample contamination by handling their own samples
- Accurately tailoring “blend and extend” potency mixes
Heavy industry reliance on lab testing, as mentioned, comes with wait times, resulting in challenges that have presented huge qualitative roadblocks for extractors.
With accurate testing, extractors can get the highest yield from their biomass and achieve specific potency percentages. With real-time and portable testing, they can adjust processes rapidly to create their desired product — and get to market sooner.
Today, extractors can decentralize their testing to get the real-time results essential to producing their high-quality products in a shorter timeframe — and making the most of their production capacity.
What this all means
Testing delivers more than potency results when it delivers them fast enough. Money, time and yield are wasted waiting for lab results when decentralized testing can be just as accurate.
No other testing solution on the market delivers the same combination of accuracy, speed, portability and ease of use as Ekidna.
Want to know more? Contact us!
