Return on Investment in Digital Crop Protection

Nov 29, 2024 Posted by: Blane Goettle ROI,  UVC

UVC Air/Plant/Surface (APS) Disease Management in INDOOR Cannabis Operations

  1. What’s at stake: While very few outbreaks result in a complete loss, the effects of pest and disease outbreaks are among the most significant industry challenges.
    1. Continued introduction of new vectors from a globalizing market, combined with toughening regulations and resistance to treatment make this problem worse and worse every season.
    2. The larger the operation, the tougher the challenge as control practices compete with scale.
    3. For the boutique players, the pursuit of novel genetics to gain competitive advantage increases risk of outbreak/losses where they have an advantage implementing safeguards.
    4. Consistently delivering heavily treated (remediated) product can result in long term brand reputation damage.
  2. Disease Events Lead to Losses:
    1. Typical Outbreak of PM or Botrytis is observed roughly 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 cycles – once a year for an indoor grower. An outbreak usually spreads to adjacent rooms given the cost and complexity of containing the pathogen. Accordingly, a facility that might be clean for a full year or two, will have a few / all rooms infected in a following year.
    2. Range of loss is between 30% and 70% depending on severity with the range a factor of spray damage or disease damage reducing quality and quantity of the harvest. Conservatively, an outbreak will lead to a 30% reduction in price and, say 20% reduction in yield resulting in a 50% reduction in revenue from the room or ~$45/SFc.
    3. Input costs and labor to treat the crop range considerably, but any reduction in spray cycles is welcome by the grower.
  3. Higher Purity Standards Point to Even Tougher Challenges Ahead: Currently many recreational growers subject to new stringent bio-contamination losses where many failures lead to remediation and crop quality reduction.

DIGITAL CROP PROTECTION DELIVERS UNPRECEDENTED ROI

UVC APS Treatment Technology has been shown to reduce the likelihood of outbreak, all else equal, by 50% or more without reducing plant quality -- generating significant boost in yield and revenue before accounting for savings associated with reduced treatment costs. The example below takes a very conservative view via the results of managing only one outbreak per room per year. Many indoor growers and especially greenhouse operations are constantly suppressing PM, Botrytis and pests where the benefits would be many times those
shown.

Bottom line? UVC APS Treatment Technology delivers more than 100% Return on Investment, paying for itself in well under a year.