“We’ve built machines that understand how cannabis plants need to be handled, managed, manipulated, packaged, and taken care of,” says GreenBroz CEO Cullen Raichart. This approach, he believes, is the way forward for an industry that has, up to now, largely attempted to adapt equipment from other sectors.

GreenBroz is a veteran-owned company that has always listened to its customers in the cannabis marketplace, using their feedback to design and develop highly innovative, cannabis-specific harvesting solutions. The company not only includes trimmers, precision batchers, trichrome extractors, destemmers, and presses – all specifically designed for use in cannabis operations – in its product lines, it has developed components that integrate all these stages to offer fully-automated harvesting solutions.

GreenBroz was founded in 2012 by CEO Cullen Raichart. Together with like-minded friends from the industry, Raichart recognized that there was a real need in the market for equipment designed around a deep understanding of the cannabis product, and that would consequently ensure an optimal harvest every time. The difference at GreenBroz – expertise and a passion for industry-born innovations that put cannabis first – bred success from the start.

Understanding how things work
“I was involved in the growing part of the industry and wasn’t all that good at that part of it,” Raichart admits. “But,” he says, “I’ve always been mechanical and had a mechanical eye, and I understood how to make things work, fix things and make them better.” Recognizing Raichart’s focus and potential, a friend commissioned him to build what would be the first of GreenBroz’ offerings, the Alchemist.

“The machines that were out there were all barrel-type, tumble-crumble machines that cause a lot of damage to the product. I saw that opportunity and kind of jumped at it and brought a machine to market that has revolutionized the way people look at dry-trimming machines. That was the flagship product that launched us into being a successful company,” Raichart shares.

The flower focus
The cannabis flower is the focus at GreenBroz because, as Raichart points out, “It’s the flower of the plant that holds the value, and so it’s the treatment of that flower that has no rind or protection or skin on the outside. You need to be gentle with it and treat it the way it needs to be treated.”

From a sorter that brings unparalleled speed and lightness of touch to the handling of the product – preserving the integrity of the flower – to batching equipment of unmatched accuracy, GreenBroz helps customers bring their harvests to market more efficiently and with much improved quality and consistency.

GreenBroz’ equipment is standalone, but it is also designed to function in harmony. By pairing the Model M Dry Trimmer, a next-generation trimmer that closely replicates the actions of hand trimming, with the Alchemist 420 Trichrome Extractor, customers can reach a new level of value from their operations. A similar leap in efficacy occurs with the pairing of the 215 Dry Trimmer and the Alchemist 215.

Raichart is critical of the fairly common tendency in the cannabis product industry to source equipment from wholly unrelated manufacturing segments and co-opt it into service on a cannabis production line. As he explains, “There are a lot of companies that are trying to bring external products to serve the cannabis industry because there is such a huge need, but oftentimes this leads to a bad fit for both the producing company and the company that buys the equipment.”

Real needs, real answers
GreenBroz takes a collaborative approach to product development, researching customers’ thoughts and experiences to ensure that ideas are industry-born, and that they address real needs. Of course, this is how the company operated from the beginning, and the approach is proving successful in designing and building today’s product lines. As soon as GreenBroz solves one problem, it’s on to the next. Innovation shines through in new and exciting technology that’s being invented for a fresh market sector that’s also being developed.

“It’s always been a response to the needs of the marketplace, trying to find what needs to be taken care of because once you take care of one bottleneck, another bottleneck shows up,” says Raichart. “Any production facility can tell you that: they solve one problem and they find another problem to go after and that’s what we’ve been doing – helping customers be successful by solving their problems one at a time.”

This innovation is truly showcased in GreenBroz’s TheBOX™ offering, which provides customers with crop-saving technology to make the most of a harvest when conditions and yields aren’t ideal, including the presence of mold and microbial contamination. Built in accordance with healthcare validation standards, TheBOX™ can be used for terpene infusions or even rehydration.

GreenBroz has introduced key pieces of equipment that have revolutionized the harvest, but now it is going a step further. It is integrating the machinery through components like conveyors to provide its global customer base with complete automated harvesting solutions. Naturally, these are designed and engineered to the specific needs of a cannabis harvest, which includes providing a platform from which data can be collected and analyzed.

For Raichart, “It’s about bringing intelligence to tools, and bringing tools together, and bringing data to customers, so that all of that becomes a value-add for the customer, instead of tools becoming a liability.”

An eye on the world
Servicing customers not just locally but around the world, compliance is a major issue for GreenBroz. From the beginning, the company has been heads-up, taking meticulous care to satisfy the requirements and address the regulations its customers face, regardless of whether the market is established or in the throes of emerging.

“We do things, with the preparation of our equipment and design, to prepare us to be in the international market. We are always looking at products we build and what we build those products out of. We look for cleanliness standards, material standards, and production standards,” Raichart explains.

Using the best materials and the best manufacturing processes while inventing solutions to an industry’s production issues and at the same time complying with evolving regulations is no simple task, but unraveling complexity has been a way of life for GreenBroz since day one. In the meantime the company has set the industry standard with its intelligent tools.

“For us, it’s about looking at the future and seeing what is coming,” says Raichart. “We’ve gone from producing a real high-quality piece of equipment that basically has an on/off switch and a timer, to working with electronics and controls that collect data and provide feedback and information to customers.”

Naturally, GreenBroz ensures that the electrical panels in its new lines of equipment are ULC rated for Canada and the United States and CE listed to satisfy the European market. It operates in accordance with good manufacturing practices (GMP) and has used 100-percent food-safe materials since the very beginning.

Higher standards
“Those are the kinds of things we think about when we build the machines. We understand that the cannabis market has a much higher demand for that quality and product value than say tobacco or other products,” Raichart says.

California recently introduced new testing and compliance standards that are far more rigid but won’t be a problem for GreenBroz. “That is a really stringent requirement for a company to pass and no one saw that coming, but fortunately, we’ve got a machine to get you through it.”

GreenBroz recently consolidated its three production centers into a single, well-equipped facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, which has plenty of space for scalable growth. This move also positions GreenBroz closer to some of its larger customers, to an important market, and to the World Cannabis Expo, the largest industry convention of the cannabis kind.

Logically, the next move for GreenBroz should be into the hemp market, which has been on the company’s radar since the Farm Bill opened up this new marketing opportunity. The company’s existing expertise and products lines are a natural fit. As always, GreenBroz’s aim would be to make its customers successful in their chosen market.

First, be of help
“We don’t go into facilities and tell them what to do,” Raichart says, “we go in with the idea of, ‘how can we help? What can we do to [make] your process, your dreams and your visions come true?’ We are engaged in understanding what our customers are facing and how we can help them, understanding how we can work together to make a better future.”

Using the approach it has relied on since its inception, GreenBroz will continue to develop innovations that bring cannabis more profitably and effectively from harvest to market, providing support and expertise to its customers, solving their problems time and again and optimizing their processes through built-in intelligence and automation.