User-friendly, Simple GC's Make Waves in the Cannabis Industry

Ellutiais a leading independent manufacturer of innovative chromatography instruments, accessories, software, and consumables.

Ellutia’s instruments are designed and manufactured in the UK at the company headquarters. The instruments are designed to be compact and highly energy efficient, whilst also delivering industry standard analytical performance. These qualities are perfect for the emerging cannabis market.

To learn more, we spoke to Andrew James, Marketing Director at Ellutia at Pittcon 2018 to find out more about why the company’s instrumentation is so well suited to the cannabis industry.

JR: What products do you offer to the cannabis market and what can they be used to test for?

AJ:The 200 Series GC was originally designed for educational purposes and as a result, cannabis producers find it very user-friendly.

The 200 Series GC, is compact and lightweight, making it portable and easy to use and it comes with a full range of detectors. It offers equivalent performance to other GCs, but users can benefit from the lower space requirement, reduced energy bills, service costs and initial capital outlay.

We are typically seeing our instruments used for testing potency, flavour profiling, and residual solvents.

JR: What are the key benefits of utilising Ellutia instrumentation and equipment?

AJ: One of the key benefits of our products is the support that we are able to offer to our customers. The training provided by our experts at the GC Excellence Academy can be tailored for individual customer needs, such as those already expressed by some of our customers in the cannabis market.

Mastering the use of modern gas chromatography (GC) instruments and maximising their potential is a key objective for our customers. The extensive heritage and expertise we have in GC techniques and close relationships with customers mean that we place as much emphasis on equipping GC users with the insight they need, as we do into the development of our products.

JR: Who can your instruments and experience help in the cannabis industry?

AJ: We feel we can help everyone in the industry, no matter what their experience or expertise level. However, we are seeing our 200 Series in particular benefit to those without extensive knowledge of analytical science and techniques.

Many companies in the cannabis industry recognise the need for testing but are unaware what the next steps should be. The 200 Series offers equivalent performance to other GC’s, meaning we can easily replace other GC’s but with lower space requirement, reduced energy bills, service costs, and initial capital outlay. This ensures the lowest possible cost of ownership, decreasing the cost per analysis and increasing profits on every sample analysed.

JR: How have you found the cannabis industry so far and, what’s next for Ellutia in this emergent market?

AJ: The cannabis market is constantly evolving and has the potential to be huge. Initially, we were working with customers in the medicinal cannabis area but increasingly there is the opportunity for recreational cannabis, as the legal status of cannabis is changing worldwide.

Whether medicinal or recreational, cannabis is a product that is entering the human system and like any other drug, there needs to be rigorous testing applied to protect the consumer. The future of the cannabis industry relies on analytical testing and the product guarantees this offers.

From an industry perspective, cannabis needs confirmed testing standardisation across all areas of the market. An example of the inconsistencies in testing can be seen in California, where testing is required for recreational cannabis but not for medicinal. There is also a general stigma towards cannabis, which although improving, is still not in line with other legal drugs.

Perceptions will change over time but unless there are robust, validated testing methods to prove quality, potency, and safety, this process is likely to take much longer.

For Ellutia, our strength is supplying the right instrumentation to analyse cannabis, as well as providing training to enable companies to do this to a high standard, will see our position in the market continue to grow.

Andrew James was speaking to Jack Rudd, Managing Editor for Analytical Cannabis.