Innovator Spotlight: Cannerald
Fraubrunnen, Switzerland
Delivering Medical-Grade Cannabis to the European Market
Cannerald is a Swiss commercial medical cannabis grower that follows stringent Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) to develop high-quality products intended for patients throughout Europe. Cannerald optimizes plant quality and yield by growing under Fluence LED horticulture lighting solutions throughout the growth cycle from mother stock, to cloning and vegging until flowering.
Cannerald’s cultivation facility is located in the heart of Switzerland where real estate is notoriously costly.
“Growing vertically was essential when designing our facility,” said Levin Amweg, co-founder of Cannerald. “We found with the size limitations of our building, our multi-layer approach allowed us to fit more plants into less space to ensure we fully leveraged every cubic meter throughout our facility. Our facility design could not have been achieved without the cohesive integration between Fluence lighting and the racking system.”
Fluence broad-spectrum lights are key to ensuring each plant grows to its full potential and also enabled Cannerald to expand its growing space to twice the size of its previous cultivation rooms. Growing vertically streamlines Cannerald’s operational efficiencies and empowers each of its cultivation specialists to focus more attention on caring for plants.
Our facility design could not have been achieved without the cohesive integration between Fluence lighting and Montel’s mobile racking system.
Levin Amweg, Co-Founder Cannerald
Illuminating Vertical Farms with Fluence’s SPYDR Series
Through the integration of Montel’s mobile racking system with Fluence’s SPYDR Series LED lighting solutions, Cannerald produces twice as much product in the same room in comparison to growing under legacy lighting systems—such as HPS—in a single level. The SPYDR Series provides uniform, high-intensity lighting directly to cannabis crops and can be mounted just six inches above the plant’s canopy.
As Cannerald grows in a controlled indoor environment, high PPFD, with over 1,000 µmol/m²/s, and broad-spectrum lighting is the ideal choice to optimize not only plant production, but also the cultivation team’s working environment.
“There are a lot of different LED grow light spectra on the market today,” said Severin Amweg, Cannerald’s co-founder and head grower. “When we tested different LED and spectral offerings, broad-white spectra on SPYDR outperformed the rest. It also allows us to accurately account for plant health since our eyes are already accustomed to white light.”
Growing with LEDs from Start to Finish
Cannerald also deploys the Fluence VYPR Series for their mother stock and the RAZR Series through plant propagation. With RAZR LED lighting solutions, growers can propagate vertically and deliver consistent, uniform light levels to their plants before transferring them to the vegetative phase of growth under SPYDR LEDs. From the propagation phase, plants enter the vegetative room in a double stacked vertical rack design with the Fluence SPYDR Series.
What can we learn from GMP?
GMP compliance is a guiding principle at Cannerald. The company leverages Fluence lighting to ensure ideal developmental responses in each plant. By cultivating plants under highly structured CEA processes, Cannerald ensures its plants consistently produce critical secondary metabolites that meet the company’s exacting quality standards and ultimately provide patients with high-quality products.
GMP guidelines are most commonly used in pharmaceutical production facilities to manage a medicine’s points of contact throughout its production lifecycle. Europe’s and Canada’s cannabis industries have begun to employ and comply with GMP guidelines as the countries’ medical cannabis regulations evolve. The Cannerald team is transitioning toward EU-CACP and EU-GMP processes by upgrading their facility to meet standards and to provide reliable and consistent products to the market.
To learn more about Cannerald’s innovative lighting strategies contact us today!