Columbia Hemp Trading Engineers New Biomass Processing Approach
Learn how the company worked with ABM Equipment and Kason Corp. to overcome a number of hemp processing challenges.
June 17, 2021
In 2018, native Oregonian and local hemp and vegetable farmer Billy Toshef sensed that his home state was on the precipice of a unique opportunity for positive, transformative growth through cannabis.
Could he leverage the crop in a way that improved the health and wellbeing of the people and farming community, supporting independent farm ownership while also providing new jobs and income for farmers and workers? The hemp industry needed a home port in Oregon, and Toshef felt that he had the vision and the means to spearhead the initiative. His partner Jacob Crabtree agreed, and so the duo launched Columbia Hemp Trading Co. to put their plan into motion.
The startup posed some initial challenges. While Tosheff and his new colleagues had ample experience in organic farming and processing, they quickly realized that the characteristics of cannabis posed distinctive logistical problems from a harvesting and distribution standpoint.
If they had any hope of ramping up production and achieving their mission of bringing the benefits of hemp and CBD to a global community, they needed to first address the challenges specific to cannabis drying and processing in an environment that lacked industry background and experience to lean on.
As their volumes increased in tandem with their understanding of the complexities of hemp and cannabis drying, CHTC turned to a longtime processing partner ABM Equipment of Vancouver, WA, for help. For the venture to have a fighting chance of taking off in what was quickly becoming a competitive business landscape, it was critical that they equipped themselves with an integrated system capable of higher quality output, faster throughput, and massive cost reductions.
The call led to a unique three-way partnership between CHTC, ABM and Kason Corp. of Millburn, NJ, a well-known screening and processing equipment manufacturer with decades of success at demanding food- and pharmaceutical-grade applications. The collaboration led to the development of an innovative biomass processing system that features unique, patent-pending dual-stage drying technology. Thanks to ABM and Kason’s built-to-spec solution, the integrated continuous processing system has provided CHTC dramatic performance and cost advantages while finally giving the company a platform to scale to full-acreage crop volumes.
The innovative system has reduced production costs by more than 50% while preserving the terpene content, color, and aroma of the processed plant. The biomass processing equipment has also provided much-needed consistency in the drying process, targeting a 10% moisture content of the processed biomass at ambient temperature.
Challenges:
• Physical Characteristics: Compared to other biomass products, its inherent stickiness and toughness makes cannabis more challenging to process.
• Variability: Crops vary widely based on strain, soil conditions, weather, and other factors – each crop may require different settings for processing.
• Rapid Throughput: When crops are ready to be harvested, it must be dried within a week of harvesting. Otherwise, processors run the risk of having the biomass begin to decompose. Harvests come in at specific times of year and cannot be spaced over time.
• Cannabinoid Preservation: The cannabis drying process must retain crops’ CBD and THC content.
• Aesthetic Quality: Product should look and smell like cannabis. Heat-only dryers cause a slight browning which reduces market value.
• Sudden, Unpredictable Peaks: Weather conditions have a significant impact on harvest volumes. If it rains, all farmers need to take in their crop simultaneously and rapidly.
• Prices: Biomass prices for cannabis have gone down from premium to commodity or liquidity pricing, dropping by 90% in just 3 years.
Cannabis Processing: Overcoming Challenges Together
Suffice to say, hemp is unlike any other biomass product. Its unique properties require delicate yet efficient separation and processing to avoid degradation or decomposition.
“We decided to do what seems like the most difficult processing job there is: take truckloads of hemp that often come in all at once, by inventing new systems that don’t tend to damage the crop the way existing equipment seemed to be doing,” said Jacob Crabtree, CEO of Columbia Hemp Trading Company. Many systems being used in the field were struggling, he said, because while they may have been successful when developed for other industries, the tough cannabis and hemp crop presented new drying and handling problems they were not engineered to solve.
If the plant is over-heated, he said, the product instantly becomes worthless. “In 2019, we had a million and a half pounds of biomass rejected because it fell way below the threshold for extraction,” says Crabtree.
CHTC initially used batch style-drying equipment, but that presented three challenges that needed to be eliminated to scale up production.
First, the process was labor-intensive, which is difficult enough in a high-margin market but clearly not sustainable in a market where prices have dropped 90%. Secondly, the moisture content rose when they moved out of the machine back to ambient temperature. Finally, the extreme temperatures used in drum or tumbler dryers were actually burning the product, causing a discoloration of the cannabis.
“The target we're going for is a 10% moisture content, still green in color, and retention of cannabinoids. What that means is that if it comes in at 8%, it's leaving at, let's say, 7.8% CBD content. With our other systems, we're getting some browning of the material. Now with the new continuous 2-stage Kason drying system, it’s coming out looking as green and natural as when it came in, with that retention of cannabinoids,” said Crabtree.
Kason filed for patent protection on the newly engineered system engineered by ABM Equipment in 2020 based around the 2-stage drying methodology. Rather than using extreme heat that is destructive to the hemp product itself, the patent outlines the use of a high-throughput fluid bed dryer – Kason’s VIBRO-BED system – that eliminates the common problem of burning of cannabis and hemp found with drum- or tumbler-based systems.
The new drying system utilizes various technologies for conveyance, particle size reduction and sorting of the hemp biomass, in addition to a fluid bed drying technology. By controlling the entire process, the ABM Equipment/Kason solution achieves results that are superior to belt or tumbler dryers.
The patent-pending system yields biomass output at a consistent 4-12% moisture content for safe year-round storage, retains a beautiful, green product color and preserves the original hemp smell consumers prefer. The process has already been proven in the field with customers at volumes of up to 8,000 pounds per hour of biomass per unit.
Why ABM: High Expertise, Low Risk
Early on, when the CHTC team recognized the specific difficulties, they were facing with a hemp crop, they turned to ABM Equipment because of its combination of high-quality equipment, biomass processing expertise, and its integration experience in customizing an end-to-end solution and tweak it until the results met Columbia’s standards.