Hey Jordan, I am still here though!
For our service business, we charge a deposit per visit and then per pound fee.
To have your own machine on-site, we offer both buy and lease options that we’d be happy to discuss with any interested cultivations/distribution/processing centers. For a more detailed quote, we’d encourage anyone to reach out directly to myself or Jill and we’d love to set up a meeting!
What is considered contaminated flower/trim from a testing perspective? As a consumer, do I have any way of knowing I may be purchasing flower or extract products that were produced and treated from decontaminated flower or trim? I live near Pueblo, I could throw 10 pennies into a crowd and hit 100 trimmers with a story about powdery mildew buds being trimmed up and sold off, pushed to extraction, etc (there are memes about it even.)
From a personal standpoint, do you feel like that should be something consumers are aware of? Are there any regulations concerning treated buds once they pass inspection after treatment? Any special label considerations?
Hi Hunter:
When product comes out of the machine, it is bathed in ozone molecules. However, ozone is very reactive and naturally reverts back to oxygen. It can not “stick around”. But the product does need to breathe once it has been processed. We provide tools and tricks for getting rid of the ozone molecules from the flower. Like I mentioned, there is a slight decrease in terpenes and potency after processing but it is not something that would be noticed by your customers.
Ozone is very dangerous but our machine has many fail safes so to prevent ozone from leaking out of the chamber. Additionally, you can not open the door once the machine is running, We have destruct fans in the machine so once it is done processing, it pulls in all of the ozone molecules and immediately converts it to oxygen.
Contaminated flower would be anything that fails over 10,000 CFU’s. After product that is run in our machine and passes testing is safe for consumers. I do believe that consumers should know about this and we have branding that would alert the consumer that the product has been “cleaned” and is safe for consumption. But I dont think consumers are there yet. Maybe now since the whole Lightshade recall happened.
I want consumers to think of us similar to food pasteurization.
I also dont think failed flower should be blasted. There are going to be huge issues with aflatoxin and mycotoxins remaining after any sort of extraction process. Flower should always been treated in our machine before being blasted.
@JoshWillow I come from and still represent a home growers community (about 25,000 growers,) I see guys putting ozone generators in 4 ft x 4 ft x 7 ft grow tents quite a bit. Any advice for the home grower population on what they may potentially be doing when they do that? Is there any way for joe-grower to test ozone levels at home? Or should we be leaving this to the professionals?
@JillE @JoshWillow where do you envision the global cannabis industry in 5 years and how will that impact your business?
I know I’ve definitely smelled Ozone when I had a bad Ionic Breeze device. It’s a very peculiar scent.
I know exactly what you are talking about! Very distinct!
Ozone levels can be difficult to build and maintain, because of how quickly it oxidizes. Those machines can be beneficial to the grow process but won’t significantly decrease microbial levels. That would generally be more effective for simple smell control. The levels of ozone required and produced by our machine would be very toxic, which is why we use a closed environment with safeguards
I believe we are moving towards more compliance and the implementation of food safety standards. This will be treated as a food product and/or pharmaceutical. Those standards will then need to be implemented into SOP’s and HACCP plans.
Will cannabis “pasteurization” become mandatory? Quite possibly since it is in the food industry. I hope to see us as a standard and a leader in cannabis and public safety.
Which is why you will smell that when product comes out of the machine. But it degrades and the terpene profile will then be present.
Awesome, thank you for the response!
How mobile is this service? What’s the reach of Willow Industries, is this Colorado only? USA?
How big are the machines? Could you truck-mount these for a mobile decontamination lab?
Is there a certain timeframe from harvest someone should use ozone treatment during the process? Can it be done while buds are still wet? Do they have to have a certain moisture level to them?
Our service business is completely mobile within 2-3 hours around Denver. Regulations don’t allow product to be brought outside, so our unit fits through a standard door and runs inside of the clients facility. We can certainly send machines to other states and hope to have the service business nationwide soon! We’re getting closer to moving into Canada as well.
Product should be fully dried, cured and trimmed before going into the Willow. We do not recommend product to be wet, as the ozone is not as effective. We like to see moisture levels between 7-10%. You see very little mold growth at those moisture levels.
We have an ever-growing number of Canadian members on here, that’s going to be great news!
Great questions so far everyone! Keep them coming if you have any others here and we’ll keep the interview going a bit longer!
Alright everyone, looks like we’re wrapping up then! Great questions, great answers by @JoshWillow and @JillE! Thank you both so much for taking time out of your day here to answer our questions and I hope this has been a good learning experience for the community (I know I learned quite a bit!)
Thanks everyone! Please don’t hesitate to reach out if we can help your cultivation pass mandatory testing. We’d love to hear from you!
Thank you Jordan for hosting this forum! We are very excited to be part of the group and happy to answer any questions that come up in the future. Again, our goal is to help cultivators worry less about passing microbial tests and providing consumers a consistently safe product.
