Written by M. Alvarez, Operations
Cannabis was not on our radar in 2011 when we started the company. By 2017 it was our second-biggest single industry. Today it is our largest. Here is what the inside of a Colorado licensed cultivation facility looks like from a corrugated supplier's perspective.
Cure rooms.
After a harvest, raw flower needs to dry slowly under controlled humidity. Most facilities run a series of cure rooms where the product sits in fabric or paper-lined bins for two to four weeks. Gaylord boxes are perfect for this: they breathe, they stack, they can be moved by a single forklift, and they are cheap enough to dedicate one to a single batch. Grade A is the minimum here because the boxes are food-adjacent and inspectors do not appreciate scuffed corners.
Drying transfers.
Once flower is dry, it gets moved from the cure room to the trim room, the testing lab, and eventually to packaging. Each transfer is a chance for a cheap, clean, easy-to-handle bulk container to do its job. Cultivators with serious volume run dozens of internal moves per day and cycle through hundreds of gaylords per week.
METRC and tracking.
Colorado's seed-to-sale tracking system requires every container to be associated with a batch ID. Our customers in this space sticker every gaylord with a printed METRC tag and rotate the boxes through their facility on a strict schedule. We have started offering pre-stickered gaylords with blank tag fields as an add-on for a few of our larger accounts.
Why used boxes win.
A new doublewall gaylord costs $28-$34. A grade-A reclaimed one from us costs around $11. Multiplied across a 500-unit cure-room fleet, the savings are obviously significant — but the real win is that we can deliver in a week instead of the four-week lead time that most converters quote. Cannabis facilities scale their bin fleets seasonally, and used inventory lets them flex up without committing to a giant new-box order.