Transcript:

Madeline Colli: What issues can arise from manual pre-roll production that are overcome by automation?

Kyle Loucks: It’s primarily, it’s consistency. I mean, that’s the real one. You can have a really great guy or gal behind a pre-roll machine, or, like, a knock box, or any kind of, like filler. For example, they can crush it, you know, for a day, two days a week. But eventually, they kind of get slowed down. There’s just variability there. And so that’s what I really wanted to do. Which was to be able to take somebody that has that “eye” that really knows what it takes to make a really good joint. But then also, take the manual part out of it so it’s important to invest in your operator to make the flower in the right state, so that it makes a great joint. And then just let the machine do the work and let it just pump out joints consistency.

Harrison Bard: It’s interesting, you know, I would almost flip it and say what issues can arise from automated pre-roll production that could be overcome by manual pre-roll production. Because really, I mean, yes, consistency, but when you go for consistency on an automated pre-roll machine, you have to sacrifice a lot about the quality of your flower. You have to sacrifice the particle size that you’re willing to grind your material to. Most cannabis companies don’t want to grind their weed into really small particles. It makes them sad. It makes them feel like they’re ruining it. And then they also don’t want to dry out the weed as much as they have to on an automated machine, which is you have to get it down to that lower end of the spectrum, like 8% or less moisture content. So, really with automated machines, you are getting consistency, but that’s very easy to get with the manual pre-roll machine or tabletop machine.

The biggest thing that these companies are doing is that they are trying to reduce their labor costs, and that is easy to do with an automated machine, but I think that there’s a lot of companies that we’re working with now that bought one automated pre-roll machine, loved it. It was great. It grew their sales to the point where now they need to expand production. And they’re like, “Okay, should I spend another $200,000, if not more?” Some of these machines are like $300 or at least $250,000, to double my production. Most automated pre-roll machines make 800 to 1,200 pre-rolls per hour. And if you want to then double that to 1,600 to 2,400, you have to then spend another $200,000. It’s very cost prohibitive to scale. I mean, what if you want to triple it? Now you need to spend another $200,000 and the advancements with the tabletop machines, with the closing tools and the better quality packing bases in the metering trays, have gotten to the point where you could actually make more pre-rolls, if not the same amount, with a tabletop machine and two employees than a $200,000 machine, and you still need an employee to run that machine.

As soon as that automated machine goes down, you’re out of luck. More often than not, you’ll need a more technical employee, someone with an engineering background that could troubleshoot and manage that automated machine. Whereas, with a tabletop filling machine which is much more straightforward, way less moving parts, it’s most likely not going to break, and if it does break, you could usually add one of those items off our website and get that spare part in a second versus the automated machine. Sometimes you need to pay like, $5,000 to get an engineer from the company to fly down, stay at your facility for a couple days, and then you’re out for like, a whole week, if not longer. So, we’ve had companies that had automated machines sell their automated machine and then buy the Fill N Fold machine off our website, and then get like, four or five of them. One of the biggest pre-roll companies in the state of Michigan has nine of them and is just ripping through 1,000’s and 1,000’s of pre-rolls per shift, which would be pretty much impossible unless you’re willing to pay a million dollars in machines. People in the cannabis industry can’t afford that level of capital expenditures.