Published on 25/02/2021
Aside from licensing, the most crucial first step in successful cultivation is facility design. Facility design isn’t just about placing a bunch of rooms inside a box; it directly affects how efficiently your facility will operate for many years. Facility design doesn’t start with a building, nor with architects, plumbers, or electricians. It begins with your crop strategy. The way you want to grow your plant directly determines how much space you allocate for cloning, maintaining mother plants, vegetative growth, and flowering.
Available funds are a big driver in decision-making when designing a new facility. Some focus on the short-term goals and opt for the cheapest way to build. Others look for long-term success and dial in on systems and expansion possibilities. No matter which road you travel, there are a few rules to abide by when starting. The biggest mistake occurs when you design with blinders towards the future. When occupying a space, one must design with a forward look, even if the initial goal is only to build up to half the facility’s size. Proper routing, processes and central locations for clone/mom and veg become stumbling blocks in efficiency if not properly executed.
A second mistake is not involving experts during the design phase. This goes back to the opening remark of this article about starting with a crop strategy. We have seen many facilities built without input from the growing staff. In fact, the growing team is often an afterthought when the facility is nearly complete. Most growers end up working with the tools provided by ownership, but the mistakes made will continue to affect your operational expenses (OPEX) over the years.
The industry often operates with a mindset of “we’ve always done it like this.” The illicit nature of our sector prevents many growers from adopting modern agricultural methods, options, and tools. Because of this, they have not embraced these innovations, often through no fault of their own. However, numerous options are available to scale and efficiently manage large-scale indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse facilities.
Climate computer systems, fully automated irrigation systems, labor registration systems, norm time labor management and Integrated Pest Management are just a few that make a huge impact.
At the end of the day, you only have one chance to build it right, and that is the first time. The magic is in people that understand both the growing and the design side. Find a reliable partner before embarking on your facility to sustain success from day 1.
Solving the previously mentioned challenges requires partners with the right expertise. Cultivators has been formed to meet the demand for reliable partners that deliver custom-tailored businesses instead of products. Cultivators commits to successful project and growing business. Therefor we work in partnership with our customers do deliver results. In other words, we are not in the industry to sell hours.
Cultivators is all about growing business, by providing knowledge, people, and network for successful business. Since 2019 Cultivators offers a multidisciplinary, geographically dispersed team in Europe, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Our team supports cultivators, and horticultural ancillary businesses, but also processors, retailers, and cannabis product developers, in areas of cannabis pre- and post-harvest and cannabis law.
A near-global recognition of the benefits of cannabis has led to countries amending their regulations to pursue therapeutic use and research. These actions have resulted in substantial growth in the cannabis industry. Few industries have experienced as rapid growth as the legal cannabis industry, and even fewer face such complex legal issues. Successful businesses within the industry characteristically understand various aspects, including legal, regulatory, operational, and financial considerations.
Just as well-thought-out planning and sound knowledge enable a prosperous harvest, a company must be aware of its operating environment. Many cannabis industry companies have been hindered from developing by unforeseen early impracticalities. 90% of startups fail in their first year—a well-known statistic—due to misunderstandings of the market, poor business plans, insufficient financing, rapid expansion, inadequate employee training, and other issues.
Problems like these could have been prevented or nipped in the bud by modern consultancy methods. Cultivators works on the principle of project based and/ or committed consultancy. Our focus is not on building greenhouses, not doing projects, but growing your business.
Supporting in every part of business from initial business idea, production and sales of your cannabis product. A solid cultivation system is driven by safety, quality and consistency of the final product. Therefore we closely cooperate with the best suppliers in the industry committed to success.
We provide our knowledge, people, and network so you can succeed.