Maximum Yield i News Article: Colorado Cannabis Extracts Company Green Dot Labs

Mac & Fulton’s Kent Gruetzmacher had the opportunity to visit Green Dot Labs in Boulder, CO to interview the cannabis extracts company for Maximum Yield Magazine. Here are the main takeaways from the article and tour of the hydrocarbon extracts facility:

Kent’s tour of Green Dot Labs was facilitated by Co-Founders Alana and David Malone and Senior Cultivation Manager John Hartsoe. The Malones, a husband-and-wife team, have been essential in pushing the business to the forefront of innovation and distinction in the cannabis extracts field.

Cannabis Extracts Business in Colorado: Form and Procedure

Some of the most important elements of successful cannabis business operations in today’s market are compliance, branding, and good manufacturing practices. Green Dot Labs shaped their business model around these ideals. Initially, Green Dot Labs had its beginnings in the medical side of the Colorado cannabis industry. Recently, they have scaled to meet the demands of the booming recreational cannabis market.

Since its inception, Green Dot Labs has primarily focused on high-end hydrocarbon extracts. To this end, Dave stated, “Green Dot Labs was the first [Colorado cannabis] extraction company to outsource professional help in the development of safe laboratory practices.” With this unprecedented move, Green Dot Labs began developing innovative extraction SOP’s. These reflect the good manufacturing practice standards of the pharmaceutical and food production industries.

The team at Green Dot Labs pushed for these standards of safety excellence to meet the strict requirements of Boulder’s regulations and their own commitment to quality and safety. As Dave explained, the city of Boulder took notice of their operations and decided to adopt Green Dot Labs’ safety standards as the city’s regulatory model for safe hydrocarbon extractions. Dave explained that the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) chose to model their hydrocarbon extraction compliance standards on those of the City of Boulder. This move made Green Dot Labs’ standards highly influential on a statewide basis.

Reverse Engineering a Cannabis Extracts Business

The team at Green Dot Labs has established a successful Colorado cannabis brand and business by focusing on making the best extracts possible. Their approach is entirely their own. They designed their state-of-the-art cultivation and extraction facility by starting with the concept of top-shelf extractions and working backwards. As Dave puts it, Green Dot is “reverse engineering an extract business.”

Green Dot Labs’ unique approach to streamlining a cultivation and extraction business is evident in the fact, as Dave explained, that they are “not a flower business, they are a resin business.” The indoor gardening team at Green Dot Labs has developed what he describes as “an extensive genetic portfolio bred specifically for resin production and extracts.” Malone has embarked on a serious breeding program, in which he creates unique, resin-heavy strains strictly for Green Dot Labs’ hydrocarbon extracts. Dave made it clear that, for their gardens “pounds per light is not as important as heavy resin production.” This is a rather unique take on cannabis cultivation. To support this business platform, Dave stated that, “we probably have more strains growing than our many of our biggest competitors combined.”

Green Dot Labs’ reverse engineering methodology is also evident in their production and processing infrastructure. The laboratory setting is designed entirely around extracts manufacturing. As Dave explained, “we have teamed up to create environments with symmetry in workflow to maximize efficiency” concerning both labor and materials usage. While efficiency is of the utmost importance to Green Dot Labs, so is quality. As such, their nutrient feeding regime is largely organic without using systemic pesticides commonly used in cannabis cultivation. Also, their day-to-day garden operations reflect an intimate eye for detail.

Cannabis Extracts Products at Green Dot Labs

The team at Green Dot Labs emphasize that “branding is vital” at this juncture in their business operations. They have created product lines to support this forward-looking strategy. For the duration of their business operations, high-quality hydrocarbon extracts have been their mainstay. They have three tiers of products in this category: Black Label, Silver Label, and White Label. Green Dot Labs is renowned for their Black Label extracts, which are strictly comprised of flowers grown onsite from the company’s extensive genetic library. Also, their Silver Label products primarily feature more crowd-pleasing flowers with material sourced from top cultivators. Finally, third party processing services under the White Label name utilize Green Dot Labs’ extraction methods for other licensed businesses.

This article originally appeared in the August 2018 edition of Maximum Yield i News.