Jushi Holdings Inc. is a cannabis company that’s active in several states in the US, such as Nevada, New York, and Pennsylvania. With hopes to expand into additional states including, but not limited to, California and Virginia. “We focus on both the recreational and the medical market,” says Josh Malman, Vice President of Cultivation with Jushi. “Recently, we have been carrying out a lot of acquisitions, and our team is currently working to implement these in our model.” Indeed, according to Josh, the company’s portfolio is rather mixed. “We have a dispensary model in Pennsylvania, for instance. In New York, we have a hemp manufacturing license.”
Erich Mauff, President of Jushi, further explains that the company is positioning itself for the full extent of the potential of the cannabis industry. He says that “the aim for Jushi is to serve the medical cannabis industry by providing patients with access to every kind of remedy they might need to treat their condition. This is why we do not want to limit ourselves to producing only dried flower, but we also want to make all other types of products that do not necessarily involve inhaling.”
Towards a greenhouse model
Josh personally believes that greenhouses are the go-to approach in some states, and that indoor farms are not always necessarily the best option. “As of now, indoor seems like the only solution,” he says. “Thing is, this is an option that states generally enforce, to keep away from public spaces where the public does not have direct access. However, there are many locations in the US with ideal weather for greenhouse growing. Thanks to this, it is totally possible to do great things with cannabis even in greenhouses. However, in order to make sure that the company is working as effective and efficiently as possible, we are exploring all cultivation options allowed within each state that we are engaged in or that we are pursuing.”
Safety and cleanliness from the early stages
One of the most important things for designing a facility is to take into consideration how the product and the staff are going to move around the building. “For our NY hemp facility, we are planning to obtain a GMP certification,” says Josh. “In order to obtain something like that, you have to take into consideration safety and cleanliness of the product. Therefore, it is the GMP guidelines that are a key driver the design of the facility, and this is exactly what we are doing.”
The importance of being environmentally friendly
However, GMP and safety standards are not the only things to take into consideration when designing a facility. Erich points out that the cannabis industry is very energy intensive, generally speaking. “Being environmentally friendly is not just a couple of meaningless signifiers,” he says. “With Jushi, we strive for reducing our carbon footprint as much as possible.” Erich further explains that Jushi has plans to build an indoor facility in Virginia once the deal closes and receives the necessary regulatory approvals. “Growing indoors allows for much better control over the different parameters. For instance, we are considering building smaller grow rooms which are completely isolated from each other. This will enable us to manage the crop with much more efficiency and it allows us to quickly clean each room after every harvest, so we can start over in a very short time. Moreover, in the case of any pest outbreaks or contamination, we can immediately isolate the problem and keep it contained, in order for it not to spread to other rooms.”
According to Erich, the biggest challenge for indoor cultivations for the next 5 or 10 years is to reduce their carbon footprint and to make it more environmentally friendly. “Having a very inefficient indoor grow results in extremely high energy consumption and consequentially a very high carbon footprint,” he observes. “As time goes on, growers should strive to create sustainable controlled environments that use renewable energy. This is exactly one option that we are contemplating for our facility in Virginia.”
The hot topic of crop protection
With regards to GMP standards and achieving a safe and clean product, crop protection is extremely important. “Crop protection is a hot topic in cannabis right now,” says Josh. “When The Clinic™ started in 2010 in Colorado (Jushi acquired the IP and trademarks of Josh’s former company The Clinic™ in 2019), I saw many other growers using everything they found online and thought was good. Unfortunately, some eventually found out that certain components of those products were not suitable for safe and healthy consumption of cannabis flowers and derivatives.” That is why, for instance, states like Colorado have rolled out a list of allowed products for protecting cannabis crops, forcing producing companies to list everything on the label.
When it comes to viable solutions for growing safe and healthy cannabis, not many growers are willing to share how they do it because, they fear someone could steal their methodology. Josh points out that “especially successful small growers are concerned about sharing how they grow.” “This is because they think they might lose their advantage in such a competitive market.”
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