Canapa: Perspectives from a 30-year-old manufacturing company – Cannabis Business Executive

Nicholas Taraborelli, vice president at Paxiom, attended his first MJ Biz Conference seven years ago at the Rio Hotel and Casino. Walking the showroom floor like most other cannabis-curious business executives, he remembers the sense of enthusiasm imbued in the room, he tells Cannabis Business Executive.

“I realized that there must have been something special here,” he says. “So that’s when I decided to invest heavily in this space.” 

Paxiom had already been in the automation and packaging automation manufacturing business, serving mostly the food, beverage, and cosmetics industries for more than 30 years. The opportunity Taraborelli saw was directly connected to his company’s existing portfolio of automation solutions. “We knew exactly what to do. We are a packaging automation manufacturer. The companies catering to this industry [at the time] were all startups. We had the infrastructure, we had the engineering team, we had the resources, and we had the spend,” to make the cannabis venture work, he says.

“Our sister companies are WeighPack Systems in Montreal, ValTara in Italy, and EndFlex in Miami. These are the companies that manufacture all the machinery,” he explains, with Canapa being the cannabis-facing retail brand. In all, the company has almost 300,000 square feet of manufacturing space, including a 15,000-square-foot research and development space in its Las Vegas facility. 

The Suite

Canapa offers a swath of automation technology for almost every post-processing need. Operators can find everything from weigh-filling, weight checking, counting, jar/container filling, bagging, wrapping, capping, labeling, bottle unscrambling, cartoning, pre-rolling (on a system that can pack up to 4,000 units per hour), palletizing, all the way down to wholesale boxing automation technologies in the company’s suite. 

Many of Canapa’s offerings are adapted from systems in use in other industries, while others, like automated precision weighing, needed a bit more refinement to suit the cannabis industry’s regulatory needs. 

“Certain core components, like automatic bagging and jar filling, cross every industry. Bottles, caps, labels–those are common in every industry,” Taraborelli shares, adding that “what isn’t common is producing automatic weighing systems that are accurate enough and have a tight enough tolerance for cannabis.”

Within the last 12 months, Canapa’s weighing systems (including its automated pre-roll maker) received an NTEP Certificate of Conformance from the National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM), a feat Taraborelli calls a first in the cannabis space. “We’re the first company to have their whole portfolio of weighing systems, including our pre-roll machines, all NTEP certified,” Taraborelli boasts.

“Certain states are now adopting basic standards that include NTEP certification, and one of those was Nevada. We worked hand in hand with the Department of Agriculture here in Nevada to develop the best solution that fit their state’s needs, and that included NTEP certification.”

Canapa’s equipment retails starting at $50,000, with a fully automated, in-line setup stretching to $1 million. “We have solutions for new companies, small companies, craft-type companies, and then we have solutions for high-speed, high-production rates,” Taraborelli says. He also notes that the Canapa automation line is modular, meaning operators can easily scale their post-harvest processing as their business grows.

“We will exchange equipment with our clients for different technologies, for higher production rates as they grow,” Taraborelli explains. For example, many producers have been shifting to bags instead of glass or even plastic jars for many of their products to cap production costs. “We will work with our customers and put together programs where we will move them from their jar line into a bagging line and take back those machines as part of an investment towards a different technology “

Built for Longevity

That Canapa is part of a family of diversified companies is a benefit, Taraborelli mentions–30 years of accruing technology and experience makes the company “financially sound” in a low-liquidity environment, adding that “we own our real estate, we have zero debt.”

The company also continues to invest in R&D and marketing. For example, Canapa will be unveiling newly developed systems at the upcoming MJ Biz Conference, including new robotics, loading tubes, and artificial intelligence-powered inspection machines.

The global footprint also enables the company to service equipment (even machines purchased on secondhand markets) with a team of 15 traveling technicians. “We’ve sold in Canada, the United States, Portugal, Israel, Germany, Switzerland… We are a multinational business that can support all of our customers’ needs,” Taraborelli says.

Currently, he is seeing an uptick in interest in gummy packaging–in-line with the sustained popularity of edible products–and an uptick in pre-roll machine sales for hemp products. “We are delivering many pre-roll machines into the hemp space, which is really exciting because a lot of that product now is shipped cross-border.”

That said, the lack of liquid investment capital can sometimes make large equipment purchases for many businesses trying to make ends meet. “What’s making it more difficult in the marketplace now is a lack of liquidity and [the need to hold] on to liquidity,” Taraborelli shares.

“Like in any industry, it begins with great products, great people, a customer obsessed vision and ultimately working together to ensure all parties are successful.”