Colorado
Hemp, cannabis and the bulk bin problem in Colorado
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Colorado's cultivation industry went from nothing to national scale in about a decade, and its material handling is still catching up.
We started getting cultivation enquiries around 2016, almost all of them asking for the same thing: something to move a lot of light, bulky, moisture-sensitive biomass around a facility without crushing it. That is a bin problem, not a pallet problem, and the answer is less obvious than it looks.
What makes it different from produce
- Density is very low. Dried hemp biomass runs roughly 6 to 9 lb per cubic foot. A bin rated for 2,000 lb will be full at 400.
- Moisture matters in both directions. Too wet and you have mould; too dry and you lose product mass and quality.
- Traceability is a legal requirement, not a nice-to-have. Containers need to be identifiable and associated with a batch.
- Cleaning regimes are strict and getting stricter as the industry professionalises.
- Odour transfer is real. Porous containers pick up and retain volatiles between batches.
Where wood works and where it does not
| Application | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Field harvest transport | Wood bulk bin | Cheap, breathable, replaceable |
| Drying room racking | Wood or steel racking | Airflow matters more than hygiene |
| Post-dry biomass storage | Wood bin with liner | Breathable but keeps product contained |
| Finished flower handling | Plastic | Washable; no odour transfer between batches |
| Extraction feedstock | Plastic | Solvent contact; hygiene |
| Pallets under any of it | Wood, Grade A | Cost; nothing touches the deck directly |
| Anything entering a clean room | Plastic or new wood | No history |
The traceability piece
Colorado's seed-to-sale requirements mean containers frequently need to be associated with a batch. Wooden bins take a stencil or a riveted plate well; plastic bins take a printed label badly once they have been washed a few times.
Our own batch system — every load out of the yard carries an RPC reference — turned out to be unexpectedly useful here. Several cultivators use our batch references as the container identifier in their own tracking, because it is already unique, already documented and already ours to vouch for.
Specifying a bulk bin
- Specify the fill weight, not the volume. With low-density biomass you will almost never reach the weight rating, which means you can specify a lighter bin than the catalogue suggests.
- Four-way base. Cultivation facilities are tight and bins get moved constantly. It is worth the premium.
- Drop gate if you decant. Retrofitting one costs more than specifying it.
- Vented sides for anything not fully dry. Airflow prevents the single most expensive failure mode.
- Think about nesting. Wooden bins do not nest; plastic often does. Over a season the return-freight volume can outweigh the unit price.
- Plan for washdown even if you do not do it today. Regimes tighten; they never loosen.
One thing we will not do
We do not sell reclaimed pallet lumber into anything with product contact in this industry, and we say no a few times a year. Reclaimed wood has a history we cannot fully document, and in a regulated product with testing requirements, “probably fine” is not a standard anybody should accept.
New heat-treated wood, or plastic. There are plenty of places reclaimed lumber belongs; the inside of a regulated supply chain is not one of them.