A Cannabis Grow Facility Room by Room
Lets walk through a Cannabis Grow Facility with Metro Cannabis Solutions.
These are solutions that have been installed in North America, South America, Europe and even Africa. We’re going to start with the process overview map and take you through room by room, the Metro Solutions. So let’s get started and walk through that facility. Cannabis growth facilities are required to have a gowning. Gowning Rooms provide a space for workers and visitors to put on a face mask, hairnets, gloves and coveralls before entering the growing and processing areas. This is to protect the plants from any outside contaminants. Metro offers a variety of easy to sterilize solutions for this area, including Metro Garment Racks, Metro Shoe Racks and Metro Gowning Benches.
Next, we move to the cloning and propagation room.
The propagation of new plants is either by seeds or by clones. Clippings are taken from the mother plant and they’re put into a medium under a lighting system, which to begin the routine process. Once the plants have rooted and begin to grow, they will be moved to vegetative room to grow to their full potential. We suggest Metro Max Polymer Shelving or Metro Seal, which is epoxy coated wire, both of which contain microban. One Metro Product we do not recommend for this room is Chrome Shelving because there is water and humidity in cloning and propagation rooms and chrome products can rust. You never want anything to inhibit the growth of the plant.
Here’s one real cloning solution that we installed, which has a quick track on the bottom, so they’re using a high density shelving system to maximize the space for their clone.
The Vegetative and Flowering Rooms in a Cannabis Grow Business.
The vegetative and flowering areas provide a space for the ideal temperature and environment for cannabis to begin budding for harvest. You will find very, very large benches in this area where plants are sitting on the benches and their hydroponically fed. Metro’s products offerings for this room include Metro Mobile Carts that would either be Metro Wire Carts or Metro Polymer Carts to move plants to and from the rooms.
Now, Let’s talk about Drying!
Drying buds is where it gets really exciting for Metro Products. How you cure and dry plants can significantly impact the characteristics of the final product as potency preservation, the smoke flavor and quality. There are a variety of drying methods and products that can be adapted to your specific needs, such as racks for drying or Hanging. The drying products you choose and how you control your drying rooms. Temperature and humidity should be closely monitored and adapted to find the perfect combination. As you can see in this photo they had a great air circulation system. And something to note is it’s something in the room does not smell right. Or if you smell pneumonia’s smell, you know, you definitely do not have enough air circulation in that room.
So let me tell you about Metro’s Weed Dry Tray.
You might be asking, how did Metro come up with such a design to dry weed? Well, this is what happened. In 2018 Metro attended several cannabis trade shows in the US and in Canada which provided an opportunity to speak directly with the cultivators to figure out what their pain points were in the drying process. What metro heard was concerns about mold, flat buds, uneven drying and making sure all of the product was rotated. Metyro took all that feedback, had several meetings, and came up with a design for the weed dry tray, which has, as you can see, the undulated surface so those buds just sit gently on the tray. Other features which make leave dry different from other trays is Metro’s Bud Drying Tray is highly ventilated. There are openings on all sides, including the bottoms. It’s easy to clean and it’s corrosion proof. It has the inclusion of microbes in which stops proliferation of mold, and it has an automatic built-In rotation feature. All of these features make the Metro Wave Dry Tray the perfect tray for the cannabis market. Metro’s Wave Dry Trays are clean and safe. The trays are manufactured from food safety polypropylene, and they’re resistant to most cleaning agents. So it’s a very easy product to clean.
Many of our customers use dishwashers and the Metro Wave Dry Tray is dishwasher safe.
The metro Wave Dry Tray can withstand temperatures of two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit! We have a number of custom as well as standard trying solutions in this photo is actually hemp provider who is using the RS3 chrome rag with wave dry trays. We also offer this solution in stainless steel and in hybrid version of this in Metry Silveri and stainless steel. If you are in need of maximizing your space and you’re in a very tight area and you just need to maximize out as much space as you possibly can, we can certainly configure for you a metro high price solution. Sometimes there’s nowhere to go, but we can help. So on the left is an actual environmental chamber where they’re using the big dry trays. And on the right is a stationary, high rise unit that would be in a typical dry room. In addition to the traditional drying environments, Wade Dries can also be found in a number of environmentally controlled cannabis drying chambers. One of the most frequent questions we get asked here is how many trays do I need? So we have developed specific formulas that we worked out with cultivators where we can determine how many trays you will need to accommodate your yields. We will ask you how many days a week are you processing, how many plants are you processing and what is your expected yield per plant? From there, we developed the solutions that make the most sense for you.
We are excited that the Wave Dry Tray is rated for direct food contact.
One of the reasons this was so important is we’ve been selling heavily into the edibles market. So having this designation is just another reason to purchase the dry tray. With edibles, we’re actually looking at a number of different configurations, as you can see, the increased air flow and reduce surface contact is just as important in edibles as it is in cannabis cultivation. Here are some examples of our edibles producers using our customers to trace slide solutions to maximize out their space and the efficiency. So one thing that’s a little bit different about edibles is they do not require as much spacing as cannabis or hemp to cure. You can pretty much use about an inch and a half in between each level. And that is more than sufficient. So we’ve talked a lot about the way of dry tree so far in tree drying in general. But I’m sure that you’re wondering what do the end users think? Well, these are actual quotes that I received from the end users, and they’re super helpful in helping us to determine what’s the best scenario for our clientele to serve them better. One of the quotes that I have at the very end is the discussion about different colors of trays. This has been happening for over a year, and we will be moving forward with three new colors this fall.
So let’s talk about the other drying method, which is hand, dry method.
One of the first cracks that we developed was a gang slash trade drying rack in this rack was developed because the end user did not know if they would be handwriting or trade drying at the moment. So as you can see, it’s one of our very first jobs, as you will see in this drawing. This room is 18 and a half by twenty nine feet. Our client came to us asking to maximize the space and provide as much fitting dry space as possible with limited space and a high yield. We maximize the height of the room by using high rise shelving. We also incorporated mobile harvest cards to deliver the product. The cultivator provided us with the room dimensions, and we went from there. So if you were hanging dry, one of the questions we ask you is, what is your product length going to be? Some products lengths are very long. They can be up to twenty four to twenty eight inches and then others to be less than a foot. So we’ll work with you to customize and mobile part that makes the most sense for your product.
The renderings on this slide are a 12 foot stationary, High-Rise. We worked with a cultivator because they needed to maximize their space in the only place to go was up by installing a high system, we were able to get one additional level of drawing space throughout the size of the room, which ended up to be rather significant. Keep in mind, it is very important to plan for ductwork or any egg hanging from the ceiling, and that will affect the height where we can put the shelving.
On to Trimming and Packaging Weed.
People will either choose to trim or machine trim their cannabis trimming is one of the most demanding jobs in the cannabis industry in creating an ergonomic solution for trimmers is what we set out to do. Trimming solutions help increase the productivity of your tremors while increasing your production. We have a train station which has a variable height, four inches. So it allows for the tremor to sit or stand as we aim to deliver a trembling solution. We look to make sure it’s ergonomic, efficient and organized again. The Cultivator will provide us with a basically a room layout and say this is the size of the room. How can we figure out maximum not of tremors we can have in that space? And then we work with them to determine our stainless steel tables with the wall mounted shelving the good option? Or do we want to do something with the trim, with harvest cards and trade parts? We really work with you to figure out what is the best way to go about this truanting solution.
Storing and securing, of course, we are talking about extremely valuable product, typically housed in a very small room and it’s ready to be sold. We do a number of vault solutions for both cultivation facilities in dispensaries. Here’s an example I’ll walk you through what happened when a cultivator came to us and said, you know, we need we have a room, 17 and 23 and we need to max out this space. It all started off with a hand drawn, but then came Brender, that then became the final product. We do a number of these systems, as I mentioned, in dispensaries, as well as cultivation facilities. Here’s another image of a ballroom that we did that really maxed out a ton of space. When looking to see how to maximize your space for the about a high density system. It’s definitely the way to go. It will provide you with up to 40 percent additional storage space by utilizing what’s called multiple IO. So instead of all of these shelving units being individually set and having space in between to walk the movable aisle moves and allows for maximum density. So this is one facility that we outfitted where there is just a ton of space and a cultivator couldn’t be happier.
So the one thing we know about cannabis is it’s an ever evolving landscape. Things look very differently. Five years ago, three years ago and even last year. So what I do to keep up to date on the cannabis industry in general is I follow cannabis business times and I follow MJ Biz daily. They’re just two really good publications. We do not get paid to endorse them. But I just wanted to share with you, because many people come to me and say, how do you actually know what’s going on? It’s because I received their newsletters and they’re very well done. And they have the most up to date information for everyone. National has launched a series of design tools, which makes it really easy to customize and specify your rooms in 3D. So I’d like you to take a moment, check out the Metro Web site, play with the tools. If you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out to us! We’ll be so happy to connect with you As mentioned in the very beginning, Material handling USA offers Metro coverage throughout the world. So if there’s anything we can do, we will be very happy to speak with you and connect with you. Thank you for reading.
