“Quality doesn’t seem to matter in the cannabis industry,” Levin Amweg provocatively says. “A large number of growers do not take care of marketing products that align with the pharmaceutical standards of the industry. This results in huge quantities of cannabis products sent back because they were not compliant.”
Levin, together with his brother Severin Amweg, Maik Pietrowski and Sascha Wäschle, is a co-founder of Cannerald, a licensed producer of medical cannabis based in Switzerland. “I had so many meetings with different people who only cared about producing as much cannabis as possible,” he says. “This is something that I do not like at all. I want to produce something good for customers. I put quality above the price.”
Quality over price
Levin explains that this mentality has been driving his entrepreneurial projects since their inception. “Producing high quality flowers is what has been driving me all along,” he points out. “For instance, when you design your grow facility, it is not about building up as quick as possible, but taking the time necessary to address everything.” Indeed, Levin explains that he had to undergo a learning process which ultimately resulted in acquiring the knowledge necessary to be successful and produce high quality flowers. “We had to go through it all,” he points out. “It was very interesting, especially learning about the GMP and what it entails.”
“We maximize everything in order to obtain the highest quality possible. For instance, we use ionized air, and UV lamps to kill pathogens, we use special water filters; but most importantly, we make sure that everything is constantly super clean, especially when starting off with a new grow. Rooms need to be cleaned and sanitized before you start growing another batch: this ‘simple’ process decimates the presence of pathogens within the room – it can actually eliminate them all.”
Top-tier facility
As Levin pointed out, Cannerald had this approach from the get-go. “We knew we wanted to design a top-tier facility, with an optimal and efficient workflow. In order to do that, you also need to rely on knowledgeable people that can guide you in making your vision a reality. At the same time, it is crucial to understand what quality means, and why it is so important. We did market research to find out what was the thing that customers wanted the most: the result was that quality is what customers value the most, even over price. This is especially true with regards to millennials.”
According to Levin, there should be a global control agency which establishes what quality stands for, within cannabis. “There are some standards such as the GMP or the EU-GMP, but these are not unique. The cannabis industry needs a globally accepted standard that outlines what quality means and what are the processes to achieve that. We have a solution for this, and we are carrying it out in our operation. The industry is changing, and growers are getting increasingly knowledgeable regarding what growing for the pharmaceutical means.”
For more information:
Cannerald
cannerald.com