With legal cannabis existing throughout the country today, it is now time to begin considering the best way to package and market your products.
Figuring out the best type of dispensary packaging that is both of a high quality and relevant to the brand might appear to be quite over-complicated. But worry not! This 5-step guide is here to lend a helping hand.
- Understand The Products
You need to know which legal cannabis products are most compatible with packaging automation. Here are some of the most easily packaged legal cannabis products:
- Edibles including cookies, gummies, snacks, and candies
- CBD Oils
- Pre-rolled cannabis
- Raw stems, buds, leaves, and flowers
- Powders
- Liquid extracts, juices, and tinctures
- Consider The Benefits Of Packaging Automation
High Accuracy
Investing in an automated packaging system will ensure higher efficiency and accuracy in terms of packaging than manual methods. Such machines have many benefits including scalability, reliability, accuracy, and extremely high and consistent productivity levels.
Branding
Packaging automation allows you to create a premium product. This means you can count on the fact that your brand will always be very well represented. It is also flexible which gives you lots of options for marketing. Display windows, color variety, and the different pouch shapes are a few key things you must consider.
Fresh Product
Over-exposure to humidity, light, and oxygen can impact the freshness of your products. To keep yours safe and fresh, you should use a packaging automation system that can alleviate these issues with nitrogen gas flush and seals.
A Productivity Increase
Whether you need to produce 20 or 200 pouches every minute, there is a packaging automation option out there that will work best for your demands. The more you are able to understand product variety and also exactly what your business requires, the easier it will be to find the best solution.
- Consider Different Machine Types
In the current market, there are different packaging automation options for legal cannabis. Depending on the needs you must fulfill, you will have to do some research to figure out which machine would be most beneficial for you. Some of the best options that you might want to explore are:
- A Premade Pouch Packaging machine will make an excellent choice for all cannabis packaging, mainly thanks to its simple operation and versatility. It works by filling and sealing pre-prepared bags that have already been formed into a pouch shape.
- A Form Fill Seal (FFS) machine will create bags from a roll of packaging film, fill them with a precisely measured amount of the product, and will then seal them tightly shut. There are two configurations of this machine: horizontal (HFFS) and a (VFFS), which is good for achieving high packaging speeds.
- A Stick Pack Machine shares similarities with a vertical form fill seal machine – mainly in the fact it creates narrow stick bags, adds measured product into them, and then seals them tightly. However, it has several lanes and can produce several packages for each cycle.
- Packaging Considerations
A key concern of packaging legal cannabis is keeping things simple while also maintaining the quality of the product.
You will need to consider whether you need Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP). This is most commonly used in perishable food and coffee industries. Before sealing, MAP mixes gases within the packaging and replaces the oxygen, which maintains the freshness of its contents for longer periods.
Date Codes And Lot Numbers are used during the manufacturing process of perishable goods. Because cannabis products have even stricter regulations than other items, you must really think about the date codes and lot numbers.
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) helps to expand your brand. It is a unique product identifier that can impact the automation of production and scaling.
- Consider Other Factors
In cannabis production, there are some strict weight regulations that must be adhered to. This varies according to your state or your country. You must stick to these guidelines when producing the packaging for your product.
To stay within the boundaries of legal weight tolerance, various industries have begun to manually introduce small bits of product in their packages (known as ‘fines’). These are only brought about to make sure you are in the accuracy range that is required by a local government.
You’ll also need to think about the type of pouch that is truly needed for your product. This can greatly affect the packaging machine that you end up using. If this is the case, analyse customer usability, CRP options, and even shelf presence.
Summary
Overall, packaging automation is an excellent investment to make for legal cannabis products as the legal cannabis industry continues to grow. If it’s done right, it can provide a substantial return on investment (ROI.)
