Consumers often assume the product they are buying is, for all intents and purposes, what is labeled or described on the packaging. They make the purchase  without second thought on what is being purchased. It is usually a fair assumption, and due to the innocuous nature of most products, the buyer is not out anything more than The time and frustration of sending the product back to the purchasing location. Consumer goods generally come with a guarantee to ensure that the consumer can will be satisfied with the product, or the manufacturer with replace or refund the product at their own expense. That is all well and good for the consumer, but what about business to business transaction where the buyer is another business?

 

In these cases the buyer would be out more than just time and frustration as the product purchased could cause a loss of income if the product is an ingredient for the buyer’s product line. For example, a nutrient supplier mixing up product lines and cannabis cultivator applying a feeding cycle of micro nutrients while assuming low concentration and subsequently burning up the entire crop. In this case there would be lost revenue due to loss of plants and lost time spent to this stage of growth, All of which must be restarted – both time and money lost.

 

In the worst case, a consumer of cannabis products like vape cartridges or tinctures is harmed from unsterilized containers due to poor handling practices or sterilization techniques. This would cause patients or consumers to shy away from the manufacturer all together. In these cases, the brand is harmed and those losses are hard to quantify. However, irreparable damage can be assured. So how do businesses protect themselves when buying from another manufacturer? How do these companies ensure that what they are buying is what they are getting? After all, the livelihood of their products and overall brand of their company is at stake.

 

Supplier Quality Agreements and vendor audits make these assurances so that business to business transaction are protected by more than just a replacement or refund. A supplier quality agreement is a contract between a supplier and a buyer for specific products that are being purchased. This contract details all aspects of the purchase, such as packaging quantities and labeling of the product and its contents, to the specifications that each shipment or lot of product must meet for the product to be accepted by the buyer. The agreement spells out the testing requirements and reporting of data that the buyer receives each time a purchase is made for a quantity of product. This ensures that each order must meet the specifications set by the buyer, and not the assumed quality of the manufacturer.

 

What sets these agreements apart from the normal consumer “guarantee” is the fact that these contracts can hold the manufacturer liable for defective product that is purchased and lost revenue due to the poor quality of the product. Supplier quality agreements protect the company’s best interests and transfer a part of the risk from the buyer to the supplier. It is worth noting that having a means of verifying the testing results is a best practice. This is a sure fire way to eliminate all doubts about the contents of the product.

 

At the end of the day, supplier quality agreements will allow the cannabis industry to concentrate on what they do best. The company is protected from losses in revenue and time spend while the consumer focus of health and safety is maintained. Let the trusted quality professionals at Orion help you navigate the complexities of supplier quality agreements so that you can spend less time worrying about your supplier and more time on your final products. Contact us today at Orion GMP Solutions or by email at info@oriongmp.com to get started on your supplier agreements.

Oregon Cannabis Quality Gets A Boost

Oregon Health Authority

Starting August 30, 2017, every batch of usable marijuana must be tested directly for pesticides according to the Oregon Health Authority’s testing rules in order to be compliant. This includes product that was sampled prior to August 30.

The state of Oregon is continuing to lead in terms of standardizing quality in the cannabis industry. As of August 30th, cannabis cultivators and producers test and qualify 100% of batches going to dispensaries from an ORELAP (Oregon Laboratory Accreditation Program) accredited testing laboratory. These labs undergo a biennial review from the state to ensure that the laboratory has procedures in place that adhere to internationally recognized standards.

Raw flower and concentrates including edibles must pass testing for pesticides, water activity and moisture content, potency of cannabinoid compounds, and microbiological contamination. Oregon Health Authority has created an overview of the testing and reporting requirements.

Before the mandate was in place, only 30% of batches required testing before approval to be sold in local dispensaries. In a bulletin published this week, cannabis organizations will be required to test all harvest and production batches of cannabis before going to market.

Initially, the reduced testing requirements were the consequence of a limited number of accredited testing laboratories. Currently, for a lab to be certified to test cannabis or its products it needed to be accredited by the ORELAB and licensed by the OLCC. The number of labs has increased from 5 to 10 since the initial requirements.

Since last year, there have been 3 instances of recalls in the state of Oregon. Two recalls were initiated by the Oregon Health Authority and 1 by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. In our article, The Downfall of a Recall, we identified how all of these instances could be avoided with the proper quality systems in place.

The increase in inspections definitely has the patients and consumers best interests at heart but these inspections are simply filtering out the defective products. Quality can never be inspected into a product, rather it must be inherently incorporating into the production process. Oregon and the rest of the country must continue to push for standardization of the industry and regulation for the manufacture of cannabis and cannabis products.

To learn more about quality by design and creating processes that bring inherent quality to your products contact us at info@oriongmp.com or visit our website for more information.

 

This might not sound savory to the manufacturing side, but often, there is high variation in the manufacturer’s product.
HempHacker and Orion GMP Solutions firmly believe that testing for product quality is useless when we are talking about GMP Cannabis. It must first be engineered into the product – Quality by Design, to be specific. Testing laboratories serve an important function in the industry. They have many different sample types, and their work must be both accurate and precise.

With multiple sample types (e.g edibles, raw flowers, solid and liquid extracts, and infused beverages), the analytical chemists of the cannabis industry have their work cut out for them. In GMP Cannabis Manufacturing, all the testing is done in-house. This is called in-process testing. In-process testings is an activity that measures your product’s quality attributes as it is being processed.

Several important points come up in these guidelines. When to test. What to test. How to test. These are the essential activities in a GMP Cannabis Testing Facility. In the Cannabis Industry 2.0 (i.e. GMP Cannabis), all laboratory testing will be done in-house, and it will not be hindered by restrictive legislation. Validated and repeatable test methods are mandatory for the analytical laboratory to provide consistent results. This is an important point, should be considered by every cannabis manufacturer.

This might not sound savory to the manufacturing side, but often, there is high variation in the manufacturer’s product. Think about it – how many different structures are there on the plant; how many different light angles are hitting those different structures, how many different samples were taken from the plant… There is a lot to think about, and those are only a few variables.

Take a look at this 36 page PDF developed for New Mexico Cannabis Testing Facilities. It describes everything you would ever want to know about a testing facility down to how they should document their work, to how they actually do their work.

While these guidelines do not explain all aspects of a GMP Cannabis In-Process Testing Laboratory, they do describe the activities well.