Four Tips for Becoming a First Mover in New Jersey’s Adult-Use Cannabis Market

New Jersey’s recreational cannabis market is expected to launch soon and become one of the largest legal marijuana markets on the East Coast.

Like any new cannabis program in a populous state, there’s likely to be a shortage of cannabis flower once sales begin.

The state’s medical cannabis producers will need to expeditiously ramp up production to meet the demand for recreational use while protecting their existing medical consumer base.

New licensees will also need to move quickly. Companies that start growing ahead of the competition will enjoy high price points at retail and the chance to develop brand awareness before the marketplace becomes crowded.

But cannabis companies must be careful they’re not haphazardly crossing the finish line just to be first. Rushed crops and inferior products won’t draw the kind of attention that your business deserves.

If your sights are set on New Jersey’s recreational cannabis market, consider these four tips to help ensure you skip the mistakes and launch your production site in record time:

1. Involve experts earlier than you think is necessary.

Nothing will delay your entry to market more than a facility that isn’t suitable for cultivating cannabis.

Whether indoors or in a greenhouse, a new build or a retrofit, design and engineering expertise is vital to crossing the finish line early.

Buying a building with insufficient power only to realize that increasing the electrical supply may take well over a year will quickly extinguish any aspirations of a first-mover advantage.

The same goes for buying a building whose roof can’t hold the weight of new HVAC equipment or buying a greenhouse that requires unanticipated and extensive retrofitting.

These kinds of oversights are sure to drag out construction and production timelines.

Avoid these headaches by contracting a head grower, cultivation expert, or facility designer early in the process and have them work in tandem with your architects and engineers. It’s smarter to pay for expertise upfront and make sure that future investments are well-spent, rather than forego this help and realize later the true cost of going cheap.

2. Start growing before your facility is built.

Don’t wait for facility construction to finish before you start growing your crop. If the license allows and security measures are adequate, operators have several options to begin growing as soon as they are legally permitted to do so.

Offices can serve as temporary nurseries to ramp up production while you wait for construction to finish. Seedlings and rooted cuttings don’t take up much space, and they don’t require the intense light or heavy HVAC of a fully lit flower room.

Grow pods are another excellent option for rapidly expanding cultivation capacity while awaiting a full build-out.

Grow pods are ready-to-use, 40-foot-long shipping containers that have been retrofitted into self-contained growing units. They are true plug-and-play cultivation options since they are delivered fully equipped with grow lights, air handling units, and drainage systems.

All that’s required to begin cultivating is a nearby electrical source and plenty of water.

Once facility construction is finished, many growers elect to keep these pods onsite and use them for R&D, tissue culture, or stock plant production. These closed-loop, independent grow rooms are perfect for experimentation or cultivation projects—like breeding—where it’s imperative the activity is isolated from the rest of production.

3. Pay for the best head grower you can afford.

Inexperience at the helm of your production site is a sure-fire way to run a cultivation program into the ground.

Hiring inexperienced growers because they were available, or because they could start on short notice, or because they came recommended by a “friend of a friend” is a risky approach to building your management team.

The head grower is the most influential individual in determining the success or failure of a cultivation business, and I’ve seen multiple cannabis start-ups struggle to launch production due to a lack of cultivation leadership.

Half of a grower’s job has nothing to do with growing and everything to do with production scheduling, people management, and facility management. Marijuana experts new to commercial growing can soon find themselves overwhelmed by the blunt reality of running a massive production facility.

Scaling a new cultivation site and keeping it in continuous production is no easy task.

Search for growers with a minimum of five years’ experience operating commercial cannabis facilities, and ensure they have a real resume to back it up. Expect to pay a salary of $75,000 to $150,000 to recruit the right head grower for you.

4. Emphasize cleanliness in the acquisition of starter plants.

Starting a grow facility with compromised plant material can cripple a fledgling cultivation business.

Insects love cannabis almost as much as humans, and they’re notorious for hitching rides into new facilities on the backs of infected plant material. Launching a start-up with compromised plants will force your grower into a battle against pathogens from the very first crop.

Acquiring genetics that are propagated in a tissue culture lab is the best way to obtain starter plants since they arrive at the production site certified pest and disease-free. However, few tissue culture labs cater to cannabis growers, and these services are practically non-existent inside New Jersey.

Growers hesitant to arrange plant shipments across state lines will need to start from seed or rooted cuttings.

When starting with seeds, make sure to sanitize them prior to sowing. If starting from rooted cuttings, dedicate one room (not your future flower room!) to quarantining and growing out these genetics.

After several weeks, any latent issues will surface. Tackle these problems with an integrated pest management program using organic-based fungicides and beneficial insects.

Not all latent threats will present themselves during an initial quarantine period. Have a reputable plant lab test your genetics for viruses, viroids, bacteria, and other pathogens known to affect cannabis. The early identification of these problems gives the grower the option to clean up their new genetics or dispose of them altogether.