Californian moves to Bend to launch company that will help people build turn-key growing operations.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
A Californian has moved to Bend to launch a company that will help people build turn-key growing operations.
TriQ Inc., founded by Matt Cohen, aims to streamline the growing process for entrepreneurs looking to get into the new legal pot industry, the Bend Bulletin reports.
Cohen said in Joseph Ditzler’s story, “the war on marijuana is ending.”
And when the smoke clears, marijuana will be big business, he said. Cohen has positioned TriQ to capitalize on it. He describes the firm as a systems integrator that will work with other firms, including greenhouse construction companies, software companies and electrical and water systems designers, to build a turn-key operation that takes in seeds and delivers a finished, packaged product from the loading dock. The price tag on a 60,000-square-foot facility, designed to produce 5 tons of cannabis a year, is $5 million, he said.
TriQ will be a de facto pot startup incubator: “Basically, we’re building the solutions for the companies that we think will be the winning companies of the future that are coming to market now,” he said in the Bulletin article. “So a lot of what you’re seeing in the industry today is that way things had been done, scaled up.”
Medical marijuana is already legal in Oregon and recreational marijuana will be available for retail sale sometime in 2016, according to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. Cohen said he foresees a cannabis industry that grows along the same lines as craft beer. Retailers will clamor for recognized brands that are manufactured in technologically controlled settings to ensure quality and consistency.
In the March issue of Oregon Business, another Californian involved in the pot industry said the market in Oregon is poised for rapid expansion.
“I don’t want to encourage too many other people to jump into this space to compete with me,” jokes Matt Haskin, president of Riverside County, California-based CannaSafe Analytics, which is looking to open a lab in Oregon. “But it’s profitable. Very profitable.”
READ ON: Green Rush — Cashing in on legal marijuana.
