Скачать или смотреть Jill Ellsworth: Creating the Cannabis Kill Step

This week, Jill Ellsworth, founder and CEO of Willow Industries, talks about her transformation from running a successful cold-pressed juice company to creating startup Willow Industries, a manufacturer and service provider dedicated to cannabis decontamination.

Ellsworth is a registered dietician with a Master’s degree in food science nutrition. About seven years ago, she started a cold press juice company in Santa Barbara, California, with another location in Denver. She pivoted the company to a beverage distributor based in Denver, which she eventually sold. An entrepreneur, Ellsworth was looking for her next move. At the same time, cannabis had become legal in Colorado and she found that many of the food safety regulations that shaped her previous venture didn't exist in the nascent industry.

While cultivators were required to test batches of flower for potential contaminants, they lacked the resources to remedy any potential problems. Ellsworth saw a need and decided the time was right to found Willow Industries and develop a system for cultivators faced with contamination. The move was also a consumer safety play. In food, the technology is called the kill step, and it’s typically the final stage in the food manufacturing process — during which potentially deadly pathogens are removed from a product before it reaches a customer. She wanted to create a kill step for cannabis.

Testing requirements have become more robust in the past five years, yet they remain very siloed and state-specific. The kill step remains optional, but Ellsworth says cultivators should expect it to become required with federal legalization.

The team at Willow created a system that uses ozone to safely clean cannabis flower and trim without sacrificing quality, flavor or effect. The technology was designed specifically for cannabis. Ellsworth could have adopted technology from other industries and tried to make it work for cannabis, but she wanted to make a system that was appropriate and applicable for cannabis. The result is an organic, gentle solution that doesn't alter terpenes, cannabinoids or structure, and extends product shelf-life.