When it came to building out an extraction facility, Wally Mona decided to go B.I.G. The 22,000 square foot facility, known as Oil Haus, a subsidiary of Case Farms Collective, will soon be open in Long Beach, CA. But unlike some other extraction facilities, this one will not be focused on any one type of extraction method or resultant product. “We’re planning to make shatter, sauce, cake batter, live resin, crumble, vape oil for cartridges, terpene distillations, cannabis-derived CBD products like isolates, and specialized cannabinoid formulations, “Shane Smith explained.
The facility will contain an impressive who’s who of laboratory and extraction equipment, including a state-of-the-art butane hash oil (BHO) extraction setup from Precision Extraction, short path distillation technology from UIC-GMBH, and evaporation equipment from Heidolph-North America. Oil Haus will also use ethanol extraction for obtaining crude oil, and eventually supercritical CO2 extractors will be added.
Clearly an operation of this size will take some time until all of the various pistons are firing on all cylinders. “Once we had the space, our designs began to take shape, “Wally said. “We are currently in Phase 2, where we’re finalizing our BHO capabilities. This will be completed in the next 60 days. Then, we’ll shift our focus to building phase 3, which will be an ethanol plant capable of processing 4000 pounds per day.”
In addition to producing their own concentrates and extracts, Oil Haus will also serve as a manufacturing facility for companies who have a brand, but don’t have the infrastructure for making their own products. And like a growing number of entrepreneurs in the cannabis industry, the creators of Oil Haus mean to control every aspect of the products they create. While they do have a license to grow, for now, the focus will be strictly processing, extracting, and formulating.
Interestingly, though, Oil Haus is also planning to produce their own brand of cannabis-derived terpenes. “Some people are producing or using synthetic terpenes,” Wally explained. “We’re trying to stay away from those, which is why we chose to make our own.”
And guess what? It doesn’t end there for these guys. One thing that they hadn’t mentioned was testing. And then Wally said: “We’re installing an analytical testing facility so we can do R&D. We don’t want to have to wait a week or two for testing results.”
Impressed yet? This is another day at the magnificent facility Wally calls his office. “We’re just trying to install a standard corporate structure to our business,” Wally offered. “Things like compliance and compliance offers, quality control officers. We’re instilling the same details as a pharma company would. We’re a well-oiled machine.”
Sadly, I don’t remember any of us commenting on that latter choice of beautifully appropriate words.
