Addressing cannabis drying vows for the German market

Germany is certainly one of the most promising markets in the European cannabis landscape.

"Initially, the plan for social clubs was that members—up to a maximum of 500 per club—were eligible to buy up to 50 grams of cannabis products per month," says Nick Abbingh from CannabisDrying.com. "In the most ideal scenario, that meant farms were expected to produce 25 kilograms of cannabis per month. That's the number everyone was calculating. However, expecting a customer to consume 50 grams of cannabis every month is quite wishful thinking."

That quantity does indeed seem excessive for a person to consume in one month, prompting a new calculation. "Now, they expect farms to produce 6–10 kilograms per month."

This is a staggeringly lower amount compared to what growers in more mature markets, such as the U.S. or Canada, are accustomed to. It essentially means that Germany will likely not see large, flashy facilities like those in Leamington, for instance. "For now, it will be small cultivation facilities," Nick points out. "Initially, there were quite a few investors planning to build small farm conglomerates with 10 farms, all located next to each other. Then, they'd rent them to social clubs. That's not happening anymore at the moment."

Getting there
At the same time, in a couple of regions, social clubs are obtaining licenses for cultivation, which is a significant breakthrough since they won't be limited by the "borrowed" home-growing plant count from their members. "If more of these operations come online, investors will move back into this market, but I believe it will take another year or two."

Due to the specific needs of the German cannabis industry, Nick and Cannabis-Drying.com realized that growers couldn't rely on the usual drying units that would take up an entire room. "The first systems we developed for the market were still based on the idea that farms could fit our normal GMP drying units. However, that turned out not to be the case, and, on top of that, they were also a bit too pricey."

So, the company went back to basics and developed something new specifically for German growers. "Social clubs are moving forward with plans to build new facilities," Nick says. "However, they lack the type of financing we are used to seeing in this industry. So, we developed a very minimalistic system with all the basic functionalities of our other units, allowing growers to still control the proper temperature and humidity to dry cannabis in the most optimal way."

Cannabis-Drying.com's new units are similar to their larger tray-drying and hang-drying systems but are much smaller. "The new tray-drying unit needs only 1 square meter of space, while the hang-drying unit requires 4 square meters." Nick explains that the tray-drying system has always been the crown jewel of the company, and this new, smaller unit replicates the same quality with all the basic functions of the larger model. "It still has the perforated trays with top-down airflow. It's essentially a scaled-down version of our larger tray-drying system, just with more basic controls. The unit has a capacity of around 10 kilograms of dry cannabis, which is the perfect quantity for German social clubs."

Being flexible
Considering the smaller size of future German cannabis farms, Nick notes that the new units could even be placed in the cultivation room itself, provided there's no other storage space, such as a broom closet, available for installation. "You could even place this in a growing room and use the room's HVAC system to create a cannabis drying environment. Of course, growers need to be cautious, as room parameters are different. After harvesting, you'd need to wait for the flowers to dry before starting a new cycle.

"That's just an idea for growers who are very limited in space," Nick adds. "But it speaks to the versatility of our new systems."