Pacific Stone Is A Rock In the California Cannabis Ocean

In the few years that the legal California cannabis industry has existed, it has served to test the mettle and fortitude of those who choose to venture within.

Unlike the ambiguous nature of the Prop 215 medical cannabis era, California’s legal industry has proved itself a challenge, insurmountable to some.

But even among companies that haven’t bowed out of the game, their success levels can vary quite a bit.

Taxes and regulations are two obvious potential business-killing factors in the cannabis industry, but they’re not the only ones.

Succeeding in The Cannabis Industry

Cannabis companies are not exempt from the many pitfalls that business owners in other industries can face.

The likelihood of a business failing increases if it focuses its efforts solely on turning a profit.

It pays to care about what your business does and how it does it.

When business owners genuinely love what they do and sincerely desire to produce the best products or services they can, their chance of success is much better.

Customers look for consistency, quality, and cleanliness in their purchases, three things that aren’t always present in products on dispensary store shelves.

While the legal cannabis industry is heavily regulated, its regulations lack quality controls outside of contaminant and cannabinoid level testing.

No regulations say a product has to taste good; it just has to be clean and properly labeled.

That’s where the genuine love for the craft comes in.

A Look at Pacific Stone

Pacific Stone is one California cannabis company that demonstrates the practices of a successful company, and it shows.

I recently received an invitation to visit Pacific Stone’s facility in Carpinteria and view its inner workings.

I happily accepted, as I immensely enjoy any chance to view cannabis production at any stage firsthand.

On a warm Thursday morning, I boarded an Amtrak train at the Oceanside station and waited for my stop to come a few hours later.

Through the magic of smartphone sorcery I summoned an Uber and waited for the gracious Stella to come pick me up.

Upon arriving at the Pacific Stone facility, I had lunch with Skip, Sean, Rachel, Zayna, Angela, Phoebe, and Clare.

Pacific Stone’s resident canine Henry, a happy smiling labrador, joined us during lunch and stayed with us through a portion of the ensuing facility tour.

The tour would take us through the three phases of production at Pacific Stone; growing, processing, and packaging.

Starting the Life Cycle

We started our tour by visiting the clone room, where cannabis plants begin their life cycle at the Pacific Stone facility.

The clone room is one of the facility’s cooled areas, something we were grateful for on a day with warm temperatures and coastal humidity.

Cannabis plants in the clone stage like temperatures around 74-78° with about 75-85 percent humidity.

Inside the clone room, workers were taking cannabis cuttings and placing them into rock wool before packing them into plastic containers and putting them on shelves.

Sustainable Heating

Before heading out to the greenhouses, we stopped in the Pacific Stone boiler room to see the facility’s heating setup.

With a 180,000-gallon capacity, the computer-controlled boiler system pumps heated water throughout the facility via a closed loop.

During the day, the system stores water in a massive insulated reservoir, releasing it into the rest of the system at night to keep plants safe from colder temperatures.

The sturdy insulation ensures that there is no heat loss throughout the system, saving on energy costs.

Expansive Cultivation

After our visit to the boiler room, we ventured out into the greenhouses, where we were met with vivid green seas of cannabis plants in various growth stages, slowly stretching their way skyward.

Pacific Stone’s cannabis cultivation is what you get when you combine traditional growing methods with modern innovation and large-scale implementation.

The cultivation space at Pacific Stone is in excess of 1 million square feet—more than 17 football fields worth of growing area.

Once the plants complete the clone stage, they head to the planting machine.

The planting machine fills pots with 50/50 mix of coco chips and peat before workers pack an eager little cannabis plant into each one.

Next, the potted plants make their way down a conveyor belt to be automatically watered, placed onto trays, and sent out to join their seedling sisters in the greenhouse grids.

As the plants grow, they make their way through different greenhouse sections, depending on their current growth stage.

To keep neighbors from complaining about the scent of cannabis, which is most potent during flowering, Pacific Stone utilizes an array of air filtration machines.

Pacific Stone’s filtration system is very effective, as the scent of cannabis is undetectable outside the facility.

All cannabis plants at the facility grow in a potting mixture under the sun’s natural light, as opposed to hydroponics and artificial lighting.

The pots sit securely in rows atop large metal growing benches, which workers can move to various locations in the facility as needed during different plant growth stages.

In addition to being mobile, the benches eliminate stoop labor and facilitate a comfortable work environment for the team year-round.

Eco-Friendly Pest Control

At virtually any stage of cannabis growth, pests and diseases are ever-present threats to plant health and ability to thrive.

Aphids, spider mites, thrips, and whiteflies are a few of the pests that like cannabis plants.

But the cannabis plants don’t like them, and neither do growers.

While insecticides are widely-used pest control solutions in the cannabis industry, Pacific Stone doesn’t ever touch them.

In lieu of chemical solutions to solve pest problems, Pacific Stone turns to nature to fight its insect invaders.

And by fight, I mean the facility uses predaceous insects to battle pests intent on feasting upon cannabis plants.

Pacific Stone says all of its batches undergo vigorous testing for a Certificate of Authenticity, of which biological pest control is integral.

“Like all greenhouse crops, pests are a reality that cannot be avoided,” says Pacific Stone. “Without any of the conventional spray products available to use, using predatory bugs is a critical tool to manage pests.”

Pacific Stone says pests are the deer eating the garden and predatory insects are the wolves to keep the population in check.

“If we make timely introductions of beneficial insects, the crop can remain clean and healthy,” says Pacific Stone. “This is a win-win, as we do not have to routinely spray and the crop is healthier.”

Pacific Stone deploys its tiny guardians in plastic cups filled with vermiculite, placed throughout the greenhouses.

Because greenhouse cannabis cycles are quick, maintaining predatory insect populations can be tricky.

Pacific Stone says flying beneficial insects can self-relocate and move with crop rotation, but predatory arachnids need replacing more frequently.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Sustainability is a significant factor in Pacific Stone’s operating procedures from clone to sale, including the water and nutrients.

Because water is necessary for life and a very precious resource in California, Pacific Stone works to get the maximum possible use out of it.

In addition to adjusting watering cycles for factors like seasons and weather, the facility recycles its water, nutrients included.

For healthy, strong, thriving plants, Pacific Stone uses a secret proprietary nutrient formulation that the company can modify as needed.

Recycling cuts water bills and helps the facility maintain a significantly smaller ecological footprint.

Efficiently and Effectively Keeping it In-House

When Pacific Stone’s plants have flowered and are ready for harvest, they don’t have to go far for the next production step.

In addition to a complete cultivation setup, Pacific Stone’s facility is also home to a full-tilt processing operation.

In-house processing allows the company to control quality directly, save on costs, and pass savings on to the customers.

Because ultimately, top-quality products at an affordable price are what virtually every consumer wants.

After completing their growth cycle in the greenhouses, cannabis plants go to the drying and curing areas to lock in cannabinoids and finish the flowers’ flavor development.

When the time comes to separate the flowers from the plants, neatly trim them, and prepare them for packaging, Pacific Stone has some incredible machinery to complete the tasks.

One of the machines that Pacific Stone uses is the award-winning T-Zero cannabis and hemp trimmer, which boasts hand trim quality at a commercial scale.

Pacific Stone also uses a proprietary machine capable of detecting specific contaminants in the buds and sorting them.

For redundancy’s sake, quick keen-eyed workers visually inspect and sort buds to ensure quality and catch what the machinery may have missed.

Once Pacific Stone’s flowers have passed through quality checks, they make their way to a satellite facility a short distance from the greenhouses for packaging.

At the packaging facility, flowers undergo additional sorting before ending up in jars, pouches, and pre-rolls, ready for dispensary shelves.

A Passion for Cannabis

The Pacific Stone facility is a well-oiled machine run by forward-thinking people who genuinely love the cannabis plant and all its qualities.

Only selling the flowers its team grows, cures, and packs, Pacific Stone abides by a motto of Quality, Consistency, and Value.

Sustainability is also a top priority for Pacific Stone, as evidenced by company production practices.

Being sustainable means being efficient, which Pacific Stone says is a win-win for the company, the environment, and the consumer.

Pacific Stone constantly seeks to improve efficiency and sustainability at its greenhouse facilities, making process improvements throughout the year.

Regarding products, the company is enthusiastic about its new strains, of which more than two dozen are active in the market.

Pacific Stone says the new strains provide plenty of variations beyond market staples, like its Wedding Cake, 805 Glue, and Blue Dream.

The company says it works to maintain diversity and offer consistently-fresh products with weekly harvests.

In California’s competitive ocean of cannabis companies and products, Pacific demonstrates rock-solid quality, consistency, and sustainability, all stemming from a true love for a truly great plant.