Who benefits from cannabis grading?

By Allison Cohn

Who benefits from cannabis grading, you ask? More like who doesn’t benefit from cannabis grading, amiright?

Cannabis grading creates trust and transparency. It legitimizes the industry by establishing a baseline level of quality and helping to determine fair market prices. Grading provides third-party, objective scores for each unique product, based on a collection of indisputable data collected by both lab tests and trained professional cannabis graders who conduct in-person analysis. It also delivers appraisal information and insights based on accurate, objective transnational data.

Cannabis grading helps growers and suppliers with quality control and allows buyers and consumers to know exactly what they’re getting. The benefits are endless.

Read on to learn how cannabis grading helps each specific vertical of the industry supply chain.

SUPPLIERS, GROWERS, SELLERS

Providing an efficient and effective quality control program. Using routine grading services allows growers, sellers and suppliers to manage their product, measuring its consistency and taking note of any changes that occur throughout their harvest. If the product gets different grades over time, the grower can make internal changes to their farm and business, tweaking their process to refine the end result. Regular grading helps growers to produce the best possible product by analyzing a large sample size of their cannabis and providing them with important data regarding the condition of their goods.

Ensuring they’re receiving a fair market price. By having their cannabis or hemp graded, suppliers, growers and sellers are able to determine the exact value of their product and compare that with the rest of the industry, gaining valuable knowledge of the marketplace outside of their own farm. Grading helps growers collect industry data, confidently price their products and further appraise their crop in the ever fluctuating marketplace while taking into account external variables.

Offering an efficient sales tool. Grading increases trust with buyers and establishes a value based on transactional market information and qualitative analysis completed by someone other than the buyer or seller. Just like home inspections prior to purchase, an objective analysis of cannabis instills confidence in the buyer. With a strong idea about material information, there is less concern due to there being less unknowns. The qualitative analysis is performed by a third-party expert that records objective information rather than subjective personal opinions, reducing the debate between sellers and buyers over personal preference.

BUYERS, PROCESSORS, MANUFACTURERS, DISTRIBUTORS, BRANDS

Making sure each product they’re getting is consistent. Grading assists in sourcing trusted material from outside growers. By sourcing and purchasing graded product, processors, manufacturers and distributors can streamline their process when making specific items based on qualitative data. Essentially, grading provides buyers with trust, transparency and efficiency when purchasing product from their suppliers.

Outsourcing quality control and sourcing to a trusted third party saves buyers time and energy and allows them to focus on running their core business.

Grading ensures material is quality verified prior to making commitments, reducing the need for returns by up to 90% and reducing the need to double check that orders and deliveries actually contain the proper material.

Access to a Certificate of Grade allows buyers to make better and more confident purchasing decisions without controlling the cultivation themselves. Each COG outlines all of the information needed for each lot of material to make a purchase decision. Processors, manufacturers and distributors know exactly what they’re getting every time when they order graded material.

Trust and transparency is enhanced through grading and certification, maximizing efficiency when purchasing products from suppliers.

MULTI-STATE OPERATORS

Consistent sourcing is guaranteed with graded product. Cannabis that is effectively quality controlled and accurately ranked and classified is crucial when promoting brand consistency and meeting guidelines and standards for trade between states.

Grading verifies the entire supply chain to ensure that quality parameters and specifications match from facility to facility, state to state. Depending on how vertically integrated they are, MSOs are able to certify quality via third-parties, presenting that information to retailers and consumers using QR codes, and therefore creating a new level of transparency. (Distributors, brands and manufacturers can also certify their products and present the grading stats in this fashion.) If MSOs are not vertically integrated, the same benefits realized by buyers and sellers help MSOs scale more efficiently.

MARKETPLACES AND EXCHANGES

Quality verified material assures everyone throughout the supply chain and marketplace that the product has been evaluated and analyzed by a trusted third party.

Third party verification provides an objective breakdown of the material’s quality. Because the graders don’t work for either the buyer or seller, their evaluation of the product is based solely on collected quantitative and qualitative data with no allegiance to anyone else involved in the transaction.

Classified products are uniquely labeled and complete with lab results, proving that products are exactly what they say they are.

Grading provides a common language, which ensures the support of stakeholders. Stakeholders are always provided with the required information necessary to make smart, seamless and efficient buying and selling decisions.

A high quality supply is established through grading and quality verification, which is essential for any marketplace or exchange to work effectively.

Without third party verification, transactions lack trust and transparency. If there are no quality standards in the marketplace, the atmosphere is fraught with potential for major problems in a burgeoning industry.

BROKERS AND AGENTS

Quality verified material assures brokers and agents that the product has been evaluated and analyzed by a trusted third party, allowing them to confidently vouch for said product without having to see or smell it.

Third party verification provides an objective breakdown of the material’s quality. Because the graders don’t work for either the buyer or seller, like brokers and agents do, this third party verification puts brokers and agents in a position to be more trusted and objective because they’re not doing the evaluation themselves. The grade is based solely on collected quantitative and qualitative data. The grader holds allegiance only to the cannabis based on objective criteria, and is not beholden to the buyer or seller.

Can confidently source and sell products without having to go to every farm or worry that what they may be offering buyers will eventually be a transactional headache. Grading saves brokers and agents a lot of leg work and travel time and expenses so that they can better focus on their jobs and support and serve buyers and sellers helping them meet their business goals.

Can market to clients without having to do all of the product evaluation themselves.

So, who benefits from cannabis grading? We all do. Everybody wins when trust and transparency are prioritized. Better quality material, fair market pricing and consistent products all help this industry to flourish — and cannabis grading ensures all of that is possible.