Maximum Yield's Industry News August/September 2020 - Page 20

BALANCING
PRODUCT DEMAND
AND WORKFORCE
IN A PANDEMIC
by Kent Gruetzmacher
With COVID-19 impacting businesses
around the world, Kent Gruetzmacher
caught up with urban-gro’s
Colin Ferrian to discuss how
his company’s gro-care
platform is helping cannabis
firms through these
challenging times.
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the cannabis
industry in ways that were inconceivable several months
ago. These challenges affect every facet of the cannabis
business, from retail shopping to international supply chain.
Even more, the pandemic has made us reassess the way we do
business — especially concerning technology. While the world
shares in our newfound reliance on technology for such things
as communications, the cannabis industry has taken things
even further with the automation of growrooms. However, this
cultivation approach did not necessarily begin with COVID-19.
urban-gro is an engineering and design firm dedicated to
the modernization of cannabis cultivation. They have gained
a reputation as leaders in controlled environment agriculture
(CEA) as related to cannabis growing. They help commercial
growers design and manage cultivation facilities, while
focusing on such things as irrigation, lighting, layout, and
environmental controls. Interestingly, urban-gro recently
launched a training and management program named
“gro-care.” This service is designed specifically to help
growers operate, manage, and service horticultural technology.
gro-care is an expansive platform that offers hands-on
consulting for today’s grow equipment, including employee
training, operations guidance, and phone support. As
COVID-19 forced cultivators to slim down workforces, while
simultaneously beefing up automation, gro-care launched
when the industry seems to have needed it most.
To help Industry News readers get a better understanding
of urban-gro and gro-care, we reached out to their Director
of Enterprise Solutions, Colin Ferrian. Here is how the
conversation went:
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