Your Cannabis business is new, and standards and regulations are tricky. There are all kinds of considerations for emerging Cannabis business owners, including watching your supply chain and the way your products move from cultivation to sale.
The closer your products get to being delivered to the hands of your consumers the more critical traceability becomes.
Your labeling better be accurate and thorough, your products better their UIDs. Part of the on-going argument as the country works to figure out the federal landscape is the concern for the health and safety of the end-consumer.
What happens if they buy a product that isn’t what they thought they were getting (as result of poor growing, testing, labeling, etc.) and then causes a reaction they weren’t expecting (now leaving that product to have to be traced or recalled)? Don’t leave anything to chance.
Your business is new and so your success will rely partially on your reputation – a reputation built off the quality and care of your business process.
Start thinking about how you’ll stay on top of traceability for your emerging cannabis business before it’s too late.
RECORDING INVENTORY MOVEMENT
The more that we see Cannabis added to food, beverage, pharmaceuticals, and beauty products, the more that things like chain of custody and traceability are going to be important factors in your systems and operations. Your company will need clear record of the inventory and movement of your CBD products from point of cultivation to the point of sale. One thing to keep in mind as you consider your own product movement is that Cannabis products can only be sold in the state where the original plant was grown.
This, at least for now, shortens your overall supply chain, keeping it within the state itself. The beginning of the chain starts with the seed during the farming/harvesting stage and at this point is assigned its first ID and sent for lab testing. In the middle of the chain, the cannabis gets placed into the finished products. This could have any number of processes depending on what your final product is. Next, you might be working with a distributor to ship or warehouse your product, serve as an external sales team, or collect payments from retailers. The whole chain ends with the sale of the product. You can read more about this process in detail here. With murky federal regulations, there are still challenges to the overall supply chain, but California may be able to set an example for others to follow.
TRACEABILITY & UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS (UIDs)
Cannabis traceability includes being able to note the lot, serial, and plant ID to tracing all the way back to the particular strain of Cannabis used. Essentially, you need data in the health, weight, and growing conditions of each individual plant or group of plants in the growing stages throughout those plants’ lifecycle before you even get to the point of tracing it through all the other stops along your supply chain.
Pairing UIDs to your products along its supply journey will further protect your business and provide you the track and track oversight you need. Of course, this is not necessarily without is challenges. Cannabis companies are limited in the number of UIDs they can order at any one time, so if you have a large amount of inventory, this limitation may disrupt your workflow.
SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
Being able to provide a complete cultivation-to-sale traceability from seed to customer means a demand for effective technologies to assure that everyone involved (growers, manufacturers, processors, dispensaries) can meet all regulatory requirements that do exist or will. A handful of states including California are using Metrc software which provides state officials with the ability to supervise and regulate the industry within the state. Our recommendations are these: Weedware and BarTender. Weedware is the platform to use for a compliance software within the marijuana industry. BarTender is the world’s most trusted software solution for designing, printing, and managing labels, barcodes, RFID tags, documents and more.
Protect your business from the get-go. It may only be emerging onto the scene, but you need to consider track-and-trace from the start.
It will be easier to implement your systems and operations now when things are new and your orders smaller. Don’t let poor oversight bring your business down. Look to companies with an accruing knowledge of the Cannabis industry for knowledge and insight on the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ of running a Cannabis business during this green rush that has everyone’s heads spinning. Start with us. We can speak to you about Weedware and BarTender® to get you started.
