Four new cone filling patent applications were published this past week assigned to leading Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth. One application provides methods for staging cones upright on a pallet to be filled with dried cannabis (2019/0320708) while another application covers a process for filling the cones with cannabis (2019/0320707). The third application teaches a process for compacting the dried cannabis in the cones (2019/0320709), and lastly, the final application supplies methods for closing the filled cones (2019/0320710).
So what differentiates this cone filling apparatus from the others?
Did you guess it? Yes, it’s automation.
The single most prominent issue facing the cannabis industry today is providing cannabis products at scale to meet the legal market demands, which currently the black market fills this void. Canopy’s illustrated cone-filling apparatus can fill 54 cones at once with no apparent limitations to going larger; however, it only closes one cone at a time.
There’s no question that automation will need to be implemented in the cannabis industry to reach the demands of the legal market and to drive out the black market for cannabis completely. This is a large step in that direction by Canopy, especially as more cannabis consumers turn to pre-rolls amid the THC vaping-related scare.
