When Testing and Security Come Together

Securing Every Step in the Cannabis Industry Ecosystem Through Standardized Testing and Blockchain Data Protection

When we work, we move. When we move together, we move forward.

SICPA, a global leader in authentication, documentation, and product security for track-and-trace solutions, announced a new partnership with Ionization Labs, the developers of a decentralized cannabis and hemp potency testing solution called Cann-ID.

This collaboration, beginning May 2021, provides the legal cannabis and hemp industry with a comprehensive tool to securely connect end-to-end cannabis and hemp processes, providing state-of-the art security at every step—testing, transactions, and communications between growers, cultivators, processors, and retailers, as well as facilitating interstate, intrastate, and international commerce.

Why is Partnership So Key?

One organization cannot be all things to all customers.

Ionization Lab’s Cann-ID solution is a cloud-based, chemical data platform built on analytical hardware developed by Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A), one of the world’s leading life sciences solutions companies.

Cann-ID utilizes an analytical technique called HPLC, or high-performance liquid chromatography to test cannabis and hemp. However, in this highly regulated environment, it is essential for growers and distributors to have immediate, authenticated, and reliable data to share throughout the seed-to-sale continuum to ensure products meet THC concentration allowances.

“Hemp is still a new and evolving market. Growers, extractors, buyers, and regulators are plagued with gaps in security and an inability to quickly and immediately confirm if the biomass meets THC concentration allowances,” said Alex Spelman, Vice President at SICPA. “By incorporating CERTUS^® into the Cann-ID platform, Ionization Labs and Agilent Technologies provide users with a much needed and trusted solution to secure and validate essential testing and potency credentials. These certificates of analysis are a critical underpinning of SICPA’s traceability approach and are vital to have in place for any future track-and-trace functionality.”

Ionization Labs Co-Founders Alex Andrawes and Cree Crawford added, “Protecting the integrity of chemical data relating to cannabinoid testing is of paramount importance. The opportunity to partner with SICPA brings a level of trust and transparency, using superior data security that will add to our solution value proposition for the rapidly growing cannabis and hemp industries. The international footprint of SICPA, combined with the power of Cann-ID, will allow our collaboration to support global markets that have an expected combined growth from USD $15.93 billion in 2019 to $112.6 billion by 2027.”

Better Together

Ionization Lab’s best-in-market solution features lab-grade potency testing paired with cloud-based technology. Customers are able to manage the supply chain testing requirements with accurate and shareable results at every step.

But even with this amazing tool for testing, the lack of authenticated security was a missing component to provide a full-service, blockchain solution. This is a strength SICPA provides. As a global leader in security, SICPA protects the majority of the world’s banknotes, security, and value documents along with a wide range of consumer and industrial products

SICPA’s proven CERTUS™ technology, added to the Cann-ID proprietary system, ensures the cannabis and hemp results are secured, traceable, and authenticated, allowing growers and cultivators the freedom to grow and sell with ease.

The resulting benefit is the issuance of a trusted, tamper-proof, and universally verifiable certificate of analysis (COA) for hemp, cannabis, and other agricultural products. CERTUS^® records and protects key data in a secure QR code digitally signed and protected by proven KSI^® blockchain technology; this enables universal verification by any stakeholder within the supply chain.

It is this combined effort that provides interagency data sharing between key players such as USDA, FDA, U.S. Department of Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, and also state regulatory agencies that have the onerous duty of facilitating logistics, banking, insurance, tax revenue, compliance tracking, and other resources required for the success of the world’s fastest-growing, specialty crop.

“As America’s newest commodity crop, hemp provides so much potential for the new green economy. To reach its potential in the food and dietary supplement sectors, testing and standards will have to be vigorously developed”, said Geoff Whaling, Chair of the National Hemp Association. “Ionization Lab’s Cann-ID solution is forward-thinking, and addresses the needs that are beneficial to farmers, processors, and regulators.”

Working together, Ionization Labs’ partnership with SICPA provides its customers with a secure and stable foundation to exponentially scale their operations within this rapidly developing industry.

This unique, win-win collaboration proves that a trusted team makes for an incredible success story.