Testing freshly-harvested cannabis material with a third-party laboratory is logistically more complex than testing cured flower samples. The plant material is more pliable, requiring modified grinding and processing procedures. Additionally, the high moisture content provides the perfect growth environment for mold and bacteria, so it is essential to minimize delays between harvesting and sample extraction for accurate analysis. 

Ekidna’s As-Is Fresh Bud Potency test enables growers to accurately test their product immediately at harvest in approx. 7 minutes – no drying, grinding, or additional processing required. Identical to HPLC measurements performed at third-party testing facilities, the Ekidna test provides as-is potency results. This means the cannabinoid potency value is calculated without accounting for water, so the value will appear dramatically reduced compared to the cured potency that is normally reported. For example, fresh bud tested at harvest might yield an as-is potency value of 9%, but after curing to 13% moisture content, this sample could yield a potency value of 26%. The total amount of cannabinoid was the same at harvest and after curing, the only thing that changed was removal of water during the drying and curing process.

Moisture content must be accounted for when potency testing pre-cured or pre-harvest fresh flower samples. The graphic atop this page shows the theoretical range of potencies when projecting cured potency values. Before launching our as-is test kit, which can accurately account for pre-harvest flower samples, Ekidna’s lab team had to understand moisture content’s role and how to account for it. The findings were illuminating, and we’re passing them on to you in our report below.

Sunrise Cannabis, located in Ottawa, is a pioneering force in blending the precision and rigour of advanced systems with the potential of cannabis. At Sunrise, quality, innovation, and transparency are combined with a relentless pursuit of excellence and unwavering commitment, resulting in products of the highest calibre.

Due to this commitment and drive to produce the highest quality cannabis, Sunrise uses Ekidna’s pre-harvest fresh flower test to investigate how cannabinoid potency might vary throughout the plant and throughout the grow room to inform future grows and optimize conditions for potency production. Additionally, Sunrise was able to confidently use Ekidna’s pre-harvest result to begin their sales cycle with pricing based on the forecasted post-dried COA potency – Sunrise is able to do so because Ekidna’s pre-harvest test aligns with High North’s COA potency result as indicated in the table below.

Check out the complete case study to see how Ekidna’s pre-harvest test confirms plant variability, the importance of monitoring environmentals, and how our results compare to an academic HPLC!

Ekidna’s on-site potency test system offers licensed producers a game-changing solution to assess the strength of their cannabis products within seven minutes. This groundbreaking technology eliminates lab-induced delays and enables producers to make informed decisions based on HPLC-accurate THC potency results. By knowing their grow beyond physical attributes, Ekidna empowers cannabis companies to drive production and enhance quality assurance during R&D, pheno hunts, and the extraction processes.

Cropsify has established itself as a leading all-in-one software platform designed to simplify and centralize cannabis production management. From cultivation compliance to packaging and distribution, Cropsify’s comprehensive suite of tools helps cannabis companies stay compliant and monitor their products seamlessly. By removing the complexity associated with managing multiple software systems, Cropsify enables businesses to focus on growth and productivity.

Recognizing the shared goal of optimizing cannabis production and data management, Ekidna and Cropsify have teamed up to provide an integrated solution for cannabis businesses. Through this integration, Ekidna’s potency test data can now be seamlessly uploaded to Cropsify’s software, creating a unified hub for record-keeping and performance analysis. This integration empowers producers to access a comprehensive overview of their production performance, facilitating data-driven decision-making and enhancing operational efficiency.

You can learn more about this new integration by reaching out to our team!

About Ekidna: Ekidna is a leading provider of on-site potency test systems for the cannabis industry. By offering licensed producers a quick and accurate testing solution, Ekidna empowers businesses to make informed decisions and drive production efficiency. For more information, visit our product page.

About Cropsify: Cropsify is an all-in-one software platform designed to streamline and centralize cannabis production management. With features ranging from compliance monitoring to product tracking, Cropsify simplifies operations and enhances productivity for cannabis companies. For more information, visit Cropsify online.

Ekidna uses sensor technology to deliver instantaneous insights at the point of production in an easy-to-use fashion, requiring no external qualifications for the user. Their first application is a phytocannabinoid potency test system designed to help cannabis cultivators and breeders understand their plant beyond physical attributes without the bottleneck caused by relying on third-party and in-house labs. 

After being selected to join the program from over 2160 applicants in September 2022, Ekidna is among 6 of 24 agricultural stream ventures to graduate. 

“Working with CDL and the team of mentors helped us to deeply define what makes Ekidna special and how to best position ourselves in the marketplace. Coming out of the CDL, Ekidna is a refreshed company well on the path to building something massive, and we’re excited to see our growth continue,” said Nic Boileau, Ekidna’s CEO & Co-Founder.

Upon graduating from the CDL, Ekidna has its sights set on growing its team and leveraging the knowledge gained to expand into new industries and verticals.

About Ekidna

Ekidna provides point-of-production testing for chemically complex manufacturing companies, with current applications in phytocannabinoid potency testing. Supporting cultivators of all sizes, focusing on nurseries and phenohunters, Ekidna helps to streamline the production process without sacrificing quality or accuracy in data gathering.

About the Creative Destruction Lab

The Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies. The thirty-six-week program employs an objectives-based mentoring process to maximize equity-value creation. The CDL is particularly suited to early-stage companies with links to university research labs. Launched in 2012 at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the program has expanded to Atlanta, Berlin, Calgary, Estonia, Halifax, Montreal, Oxford, Paris, Seattle, Vancouver, and Wisconsin. Companies that graduated from the CDL have generated over $28B (CAD) in aggregate equity value.

All media inquiries are to be sent to:
Cali Barnstead, Sales & Marketing Coordinator
cali@ekidnasensing.com 
subject line: Ekidna Media Inquiry  

As the cannabis industry grows, Ekidna is committed to providing innovative solutions to its challenges and aims to expand its lab-on-a-chip technology into other industries, such as wine and beer brewing and other agricultural applications. 

Through collaboration with ventureLAB’s Hardware Catalyst Initiative program, Canada’s first and only semiconductor-focused hardware incubator, Ekidna received support in product development, testing, and access to resources, which helped launch our THC potency test system. 

Check out the interview between Ekidna’s CEO, Nic Boileau and ventureLAB’s Kai Lim for the whole story: How Ekidna is Revolutionizing the Cannabis Industry with Accessible Testing Devices.

How do the costs and timelines of off-site potency testing affect extractors’ day-to-day operations — and the saleability of their final product? Do these delays and expenses create a ripple effect some LPs may not have considered? 

We sat down with former Christina Lakes Cannabis (CLC) President Rob Jones to understand the challenges at the heart of the lab testing status quo — and where real-time potency results can help. 

Managing and trading agricultural commodities is no new endeavor for Rob, who has international experience expanding sales into new markets spanning 35+ years. We’re thankful for his time and thoughtful insight into all things extraction and testing! 

Read the key questions and takeaways from our interview below:

Where extractors are now

For a time, wholesale cannabis oil offered higher margins than dried flower cannabis in Canada. Is that still the case?

Two years ago, the price of distillate was $10,000 a kilogram. At that price, the margins were going to be fantastic … There wasn’t enough supply … and the demand was big, so the price was high. As the [indoor] growers started to grow more, there was more product available. So simple economics said there was too much supply and not enough demand, and the price dropped. The price on distillate is now $3,000 a kilogram versus $10,000 a kilogram. So because of that … margins are very, very thin.

Are there any challenges to potency testing during extraction, and could you speak to what those challenges are?

It was interesting because we had one strain that was phenomenal from the standpoint that it had THC, CBN, CBG and other cannabinoids. The problem was the market didn’t want those others, they just wanted THC … So that changed the whole entire concept — to grow product that was going to be high in THC and low in other cannabinoids… Testing the raw material is critical so you know you’ve got a base. That goes through the extraction equipment and comes out as an extract. 

At certain stages during that extraction process, the extractor needs to ask, “is the extraction complete” and “am I getting all of the THC out of the biomass?” Right, so it’ll then go into Winterization, and you’re left with a winterized product. That goes to a third stage called Distillation… and you’re left with a THC level which is somewhere around 88 to 92% — trying to get to that 90% level of THC where vape producers and distillate users want the highest THC available.

You’d like to be able to test how much THC you’ve got at any different stage, because it’s going to save you time, save you money, and allow you to adjust your process. Maybe you need to leave it in longer, maybe you need more steam, maybe you need more pressure, maybe you need more temperature. So those are the types of things that make instantaneous testing paramount. We struggled at CLC for a year trying to finetune that system. So if we’d had lab testing available or Ekidna’s product available to us that worked and was reliable, we could have made decisions and probably saved a heck of a lot of money. 

Logistics of testing during extraction

Testing throughout those different phases sounds like a lot of individual tests. Could you provide an estimate for how many samples CLC would need to send to the lab, per batch or per kilogram biomass?

At CLC, you would have as many as 25 tests a day [during different phases of the extraction process] just on THC, and I’m gonna say a minimum of 10 tests a day. So once you’ve got that batch of crude down that’s going into Winterization, you would take that sample and send it off to the lab. And then at Winterization, you do the same three days later. And then finally, you probably send two or three samples of your distillate. 

What does that look like in terms of pricing and timelines, from when you send samples to the lab to when you receive results?

In that process, you say, “Okay, I’m going through the extraction, I need to test the extract,” so you take a sample, you send it off to a lab, and you’ve got 24-hour to 48-hour turnaround time just in transportation — just to get it to the lab. Once the lab gets it, they’re going to put it into a queue. If you want to expedite it, they can probably do a THC in 24 hours, but that’s probably going to cost you double, which is $500 versus $250. Then, for what we call in the industry a “certificate of analysis” to sell into the legal market, that is around $1,250 for a complete COA that gives you THC, pesticides, heavy metals, et cetera, et cetera ​​— and that takes about two weeks.

Back to your point about adjusting processes as you go, what would the ROI be for rapid testing in terms of being able to optimize your system? If you’re getting 92% versus 88% THC, what does that get you in terms of saleability?

In the extraction process on a daily basis, each time you’d load the cylinders, that would be 60 kilos, so 30 in each cylinder, and it would take about two hours. If I’m extracting for two hours, and that gets me to 1% or less, if I go two hours and 30 minutes, I’m down to half a percent. Well, that’s not worth it. I’m better off emptying the cylinders and repacking them again. It’s a function of time so I know that I’m being efficient. The temperature’s right, the pressure’s right, and I’m extracting everything I can. If I’m getting that feedback from the test and I know how much is left from the biomass and how much my crude is, I can stop it and turn my equipment around a lot faster.

What about on the more valuable product side? If you’re selling at 88% vs. 92% THC, does that make a big difference to the bottom line?

It does, the 92’s going to sell a lot easier than the 88. The other thing…if you’ve got an 88 and a 92, you could do what we in the industry call “blend and extend” because the industry wants 90. So if I know I’ve got 88 and 92, I can take a blend and test it right there, knowing that if it’s 49% of this and 51% of that, I blend it together and get 90%. And boom, I’m done. Now, you…have to wait another two weeks to get your certificate of analysis back because you’d have to send it off to the lab. So if you get that instantaneous testing available, it allows you to blend finished products a lot easier. And then you can move it at the prescribed or the desired THC level.

So, rather than trying to get the highest possible extraction out, you’re trying to hit 90%, because that’s what everyone sells and buys?

Yeah, and the market changes because our largest customer had an A Grade and B Grade. So anything 85 and less, that’s what they were using for their infused pre-rolls. The higher-end stuff they were using for their vapes. So that was critical to have that high-end stuff. Being able to test at any point in time is critical. 

Could you speak at all to personnel costs waiting for these results to come back, or is that not a cost issue that’s been considered?

Oh, it’s an absolute cost. Because you’re paying somebody, say, $30 an hour, and they’re standing around waiting for something. And [operationally] you would basically fly blindly for two weeks and say, “Oh, geez, I wish I would have known that because I wouldn’t have done [it that way].” So just that instantaneous ability to make decisions and say, “I’m on the right track, let’s keep going” or “I need to make an adjustment.”

Path planning: When is best to test?

Is there a certain stage where tests would happen more frequently, whether that’s on the biomass, after Extraction, or after Winterization?

I think each stage is critical. And I think that, you know — speaking specifically to CLC — they use the Orange Photonics, which seem to be okay for the dried flower, but as soon as the product gets up, and is more intense in the THC levels it struggles. So that’s why I think the Ekidna technology will give better results. 

Throughout the whole entire process, I don’t know if there’s one more critical [stage] than the other. If I had to say there is one, it’s at the final end because…if you’re at 87% THC, and you’re gonna run another pass through it to get to 88.5%, you’re going to lose a certain amount. That’s where you have to make that call and say “I need to go and run them one more time.”

What you take with you: more yield

So, with rapid testing, will extractors preserve their yield?

Right. Yield is another thing that is critical… You are going to allow the extractor to increase their yield at each stage. 

For example, if you take 1000 kilos of dried product, you’re going to go into extraction… Once the product comes out of Extraction, you’ve got crude oil. Let’s just call it 120 kilos of crude. And once you go into the next stage, which is Winterization — and you’re taking some of the fats and the waxes out of the plant material — you’re going to get down to say 90 kilos of winterized product. That will go into the third stage, which is the Distillation, and that will get you down to about 70 kilos of pure distillate, which is the product that you want to go into the vapes.

So with each of those stages, if you can take the 1000 kilos of biomass, and pull out 114 kilos of crude versus 120, and then you’ve got 110 of winterised, and 80, 85 or 90 at $3,000 a kilo for finished product — that’s what you’re trying to achieve. So the yield on each stage is critical. That’s why I think rapid testing is paramount for some of these extractors. 

Thank you, Rob, for sitting down with us!

Want to know more about how Ekidna can help you? Book a demo!

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!

The struggle continues for licensed providers to scale sustainably amid high government taxation and inflation. Executives making their pilgrimage to the Hill are looking for a review of current cannabis taxation after surviving a year of increased inflation. So what can LPs — and extractors in particular — do now to maximize profit margins?

There are avenues licensed producers can take to streamline production, reduce costs, develop high-quality products — and make the most of their margins. One of those avenues is to adopt a portable testing solution to get potency results in real time at each phase of production. In this blog, we’ll provide a high-level overview of extractors’ daily challenges and explore the larger role testing plays in each — including how solutions like Ekidna can help. 

While accurate testing won’t solve larger industry challenges, it will make day-to-day expenses and operations more manageable. 

What are extracting companies prioritizing day to day?

Within the extraction sector where profit margins are tight, production efficiency is crucial to increase output while improving the potency and quality of each extraction. It’s about fine-tuning timelines and bringing costs down wherever possible. The largest opportunity to do both lie in the testing phases of processing.

Learn How Ekidna Can Help Extractors

What overarching costs and challenges are extractors dealing with?

Extractors’ main challenges fit into three categories: qualitative, financial, and operational.

1. Qualitative challenges lie in the complexity, consistency, and potency of extractions amid inconsistent lab testing results.
2. Taxation aside, financial challenges loom large in the form of underutilized inputs, difficulties entering the U.S. market and expensive on- and off-site lab testing.
3. Operational challenges are predictably unpredictable, lying in frequent delays and availability of equipment and people-power.

Where are the opportunities for improvement, and how can rapid cannabinoid potency testing help?

The qualitative opportunity 

Extractors have an opportunity to adopt innovative and accurate testing solutions that allow them to test potency themselves at the point of production — as often as needed — to ensure consistent methods and product quality are achieved. 

Accurate and uniform testing is essential at each stage of production to confirm ideal isolate levels. This poses a challenge because lab testing has proven precise but inaccurate in measuring THC and CBD potency. What’s more, its timeframe makes it impossible to obtain the real-time results needed to fine-tune products, increase run frequency, and preserve consistency and quality. 

The current lab testing landscape is not designed to accommodate the need for rapid and reliable potency testing results to support production. Extractors have the opportunity to adopt a point-of-production cannabinoid test to aid in increasing run frequency, ensuring accurate output and rapid finetuning during each stage of extraction.

The financial opportunity

Across Canada, high federal taxation and limited opportunity to sell to the U.S. limits growth in the Canadian cannabis space. Day to day, underutilized inputs and expensive on- and off-site lab testing make it hard to economize in the face of overarching, industry-wide expenses. Large industry players, like Canopy Growth, have recently prioritized optimizing their operations to reduce costs. 

While accurate testing is essential to competing in extraction production, lab testing is expensive. On-site labs are pricey to build, staff, and maintain — while each sample sent to a third-party lab offsite can cost between $100 and $300. Fortunately, innovative and portable solutions are available to accurately measure potency without the lab. They help extractors affordably test as often as they need to finetune their extractions and create higher-value blends. 

The operational opportunity

Time is money, and developing operations to be as efficient as possible is an industry-wide goal. Daily challenges to operations include but aren’t limited to meeting demand and preserving product quality — leaner and quicker. 

For extractors, sending tests to the lab is very inefficient. It’s a slow process that ropes in the third-party labs’ own processes, taking up to two weeks for results to return. Establishing an on-site lab carries high startup costs and requires additional staff, and testing may still take up to two days. Extractors are unable to begin another batch while waiting on lab results due to product remaining in the extraction equipment to avoid oxidization. 

What’s more: without real-time updates on THC and CBD levels in their products, companies can’t tune their processes. Extractors can seriously benefit from saving as much time as possible during potency testing — and there are solutions available. Ekidna, is a decentralized testing solution that allows companies to measure potency with the same accuracy quoted by labs (with error rates of +/- 1% by weight) in sub-ten minutes without the lab or its staff.

So what more is there to know?

How Ekidna helps extractors.

Ekinda under a microscope

• It delivers results in sub-ten minutes
• No maintenance or calibration needed
• Ekidna is fully portable and takes up limited counter space
• Anyone can learn to test in minutes without scientific training
• Ekidna’s patented technology delivers error rates of +/- 1% by weight
• Test in as many locations as you like, as often as you need to keep processes running
• Ekidna test kits are much less costly than mailing samples to a lab or setting up staffing and maintaining your own lab.
  • The Ekidna system and software cost $2,995, and our basic test kits cost $60 

Ekidna exists to decentralize point-of-production testing by answering the operational, financial, and qualitative challenges of potency testing in the cannabis industry. For extractors, it provides meaningful opportunities to produce premium products efficiently, reliably, and at lower cost.

Extractors need to have confidence in the consistency of their own products as well as the accuracy of testing results — and they need this testing to be efficient and affordable. It’s the only way to get a leg-up in a saturated market and produce inventory as quickly as possible. Making the most of profit margins for extractions means ensuring highest product quality, consistency and availability — or consumers will find other options. 

These are the challenges Ekidna aims to help extractors meet head on. 

Want to learn more? Book a test!

References

1. Lopez-Martinez, Melissa. “‘Canadian Cannabis Is in Peril’: Industry Leaders Call on Feds to Help.” CTV News. CTV News, February 15, 2023. https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canadian-cannabis-is-in-peril-industry-leaders-call-on-feds-to-help-1.6275404. 
2. Smith, Brian C., Paul Lessard, and Rich Pearson. “Inter-Laboratory Variation in Cannabis Analysis: Pesticides and Potency in Distillates.” Cannabis Science and Technology2, no. 1 (2019). Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.cannabissciencetech.com/view/cannabis-extraction-facility-setup-101

The Intention of the Cannabis Act Explained

The Cannabis Act was created to protect public health and public safety. As a leader in medical and recreational cannabis usage, Canada holds a unique position and responsibility globally. The Cannabis Act, among other things, clearly designates access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis and provides a regulated production of cannabis to reduce the effects of an illegal market. 

The amendments facilitate non-therapeutic research with cannabis, more reliable cannabis testing, and of interest to consumers, an increase in public possession of cannabis beverages.  

With the evolving nature of the cannabis industry, adaptation in regulation comes as no surprise. Amendments will continue towards the safety of Canadians and the betterment of the cannabis industry. Make no mistake, the decision was heavily weighed. The amendments to the Cannabis Act came from feedback received from universities and researchers, cannabis license holders, cannabis industry associations, public health stakeholders, health care associations, provinces and territories, and individual Canadians. Overall, the majority of the submissions were supportive of the amendments.

Ice Cold and Refreshing … Cannabis?

Are Canadians going to shift their preference from alcohol to cannabis beverages? To what degree remains to be seen. 

Canadians are expanding their tastes for alcoholic beverages like never before. Go to any alcohol retailer and see the rows of new beers and wines, international imports, and craft beers infused with every flavour imaginable. With the craft beer market skyrocketing over the past two decades, this is an opportune time for cannabis beverages to find their place in bars and retail providers across the country. 

Positives and Negatives 

Consumer tastes are expanding. The awareness and education phase from cannabis company to retailer to bartender to customer will help increase trial for many consumers. Cannabis beverages also boast a healthier alternative to their alcoholic counterpart. Clear and convincing studies are yet to be popularized, but if the healthier alternative angle becomes accepted knowledge, cannabis beverages have the potential to truly become part of the norm in the beverage game. 

It all starts with the first sip. Will Canadians like the taste, the feeling, all that remains to be seen. Many Canadians have never tried a cannabis beverage, don’t know what to expect, and some are unaware they even exist. Possibly the most challenging hurdle cannabis beverage companies face is the limited amount of marketing, given the heavily restricted advertisement laws in place.

Another challenge is price. The average price of one cannabis beverage is higher than the equivalent amount of what a mass-produced beer would cost. Currently, the average price of a cannabis beverage is closer to that of a high-priced craft beer. 

For context, a can of Molson Canadian is approximately $2.50, whereas cannabis-infused beverages are higher, sometimes double or more. 

Much of this is due to the fact that Molson Canadian is mass-produced. Cannabis beverages, like craft beer, are created in smaller batches applying an artisanal approach. 

Purchase Limits and What Provinces and Territories Can Do

There is no federal limit on the number of cannabis beverages purchased or sold at a retail location. However, to reduce the potential risk of consumers exceeding the federal public possession limit, some provinces and territories have set purchase limits in their jurisdictions. 

Provinces and territories that reference the federal public possession limits to set purchase limits will see an automatic change for cannabis beverages. Provinces and territories that do not reference the federal public possession limits must amend their framework to align purchase limits to the new federal public possession limit.

The Aim of the Cannabis Act: Increase Testing and Eliminate Bad Actors

The amendments to the Cannabis Act extend to allow for analytical testing license holders and federal and provincial government laboratories to produce, distribute and sell reference standards and test kits, thus increasing access to cannabis testing materials, motivating more testing, pushing for accuracy and authenticity, and thereby supporting access to a quality-controlled supply of cannabis. Reference standards allow for better lab-to-lab comparisons and help eliminate “lab shopping” by increasing transparency around results from different labs.

This will help prevent owners of cannabis companies who corroborate with labs and falsify potency test results so that they can tell customers their cannabis product has a very high amount of THC. These bad actors are few and far between, but their act of greed threatens the cannabis industry’s fragile authenticity and should be eradicated for a multitude of reasons. 

Ekidna stands with Health Canada and the Canadian Government to maintain consumer trust and respect scientific testing and accuracy results. 

Ekidna’s Potency Testing for Cannabis Beverages

Ekidna will help you test throughout cannabis beverage production. Rapidly test and gain accurate results from the initial biomass stages to intermediate extractions and concentrations, all the way to the final product stages. Eliminate production bottlenecks that traditional labs may cause and gain more data points for optimization. For more information on how you can access Ekidna’s cannabis potency testing kits, click here. Learn more about the Cannabis Act and its amendments here.