Dylan and Donnie Acker have been growing cannabis for many years. Under Prop 64, they were part of a non-profit cooperative that cultivated cannabis for patients. When in 2018 the cannabis industry in California got finally regulated state-wide, they found partners for the financial side and started to set up their operation. “Nature Refined is based in Adelanto, a town just outside Los Angeles,” Dylan explains. “Here, they only allow greenhouse and indoor cultivation, and not outdoor. Since we wanted to go for the highest quality cannabis, we opted for an indoor facility.”
The challenges of setting up a cannabis facility
Striving for high quality can be challenging, especially when it comes to running a particularly technologically advanced facility. “We relied on a really good team of architects and engineers,” Dylan continues. “However, until a couple of years ago, they didn’t have any experience with cannabis facilities. Therefore, there was a bit of a struggle between us to get what we needed, and then them building that into the plant.”
However, the challenges weren’t related to construction only. “Even the city had its own challenges,” he says. “Adelanto is a small city, and they didn’t have the manpower to take all the applications they had.” At the same time, the biggest challenge was mainly related to energy consumption. “The electricity company here in Southern California promised us that we could have the power needed. However, eventually, they told us that it was not possible. Therefore, we had to find a way to solve this energy issue.” This is why Dylan resorted to generators. “We got standalone generators fueled by natural gas. At the end of the day, this proved to be extremely convenient. The price per kilowatt is half, and they are extremely clean and efficient. Thanks to this, our emissions are close to zero, to the point that the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District was very pleased with our application. Here in the Mojave Desert, there are very strict air pollution management requirements, and the implementing of those standalone generators was the thing that helped us with that a lot.”
Indeed, as Dylan points out, even though the generators were literally “thrown at us”, it proved to be a very successful plan. “It wasn’t in the initial plan,” Dylan says. “But it is an extremely good thing. We were a bit concerned because with generators there is the potential for breakdown. This is why we made them very redundant: we have 10 generators, and 4 of them run at all times. But they have a program, they rotate out: if one was to shut down, then another one would take over. They work together as a team.”
The facility of Nature Refined finished construction in early 2020. “We started about a year and a half ago. Halfway through construction, we decided to take generators. This is why it took a little bit longer than expected, but overall, it surely turned out great.”
A long-standing cannabis culture
Southern California, where the operation is based, has a long-standing cannabis culture, that is why they relied on a local lighting company. “We are using a company based here in Southern California: they have the culture of the place and growers in mind. We use dual-ended HPS lighting: we use a 2-tier benching system where the lower bench is equipped with LEDs, while the upper part with HPS.”
“Additionally, we use dehumidifiers and humidifiers which are controlled by a central system. Most of the automation we use is in irrigation: we have an injection system that takes nutrients automatically and mixes them into batch tanks, and then leads them into the growing rooms.”
Dylan takes care to point out that they started the facility entirely from seed. “We wanted to have a clean start,” he says. “That is why we started off with seeds, to be precise 12,600 seeds. Within those seeds, there are about 120 different strains. This gives us the ability to find the best phenotype for that strain. As far as hunting through that is concerned, it is a year-long process. When we will harvest in early July, we will go through each plant and test them for terpene and cannabinoid content. On top of that, we are monitoring the plant structure as they grow. We will look into how they grow, how fast they grow: we already pulled some plants as they weren’t performing to our standards. After the July harvest when we will have our genetics nailed down, we are going to harvest once per week.”
Working during the corona crisis
Dylan received the cultivation license just a few days before lockdown measures were implemented in the US. “The stay at home order literally came around the same week we got the license,” he states. “Cannabis businesses were deemed essential, yet we didn’t know if we could come to work, so we were kind of preparing to spend our time at the facility, so that we could do some work. But then, we were able to actually get to the cultivation site, and we could do our thing. We did have to take extra precautions, like sanitizing door handles and keeping everything extra clean, more than we normally do.”
Because of the special status of the cannabis industry during the pandemic, the supply chain kept ongoing. “I think the hardest thing to acquire was personal protective equipment, as they have been heavily utilized by hospitals,” he says. “All in all, it seems that cannabis is somewhat recession-proof, at least in California. In the US, sales have been going up a little, even though the economy doesn’t look good now. Despite that, we have been hiring people in our area, as there is a large workforce here. Anyway, there is the chance that when this is all over, the consumption might go down a little bit. At the same time, I expect that in the future more facilities will be coming online, especially in the event of federal legalization and banking access for cannabis businesses, and you will probably see big tobacco companies coming in. There is still a lot of time to get established before those corporations will join. However, we don’t have a corporation behind us, as we are somewhat a family business.”