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If you\u2019ve never been up the North Coast of California into Humboldt County, it\u2019s an unusual paradise. <\/p>\n
Giant redwoods tower over backyard barbecues, flowering trees sprout gargantuan blossoms, and dense rainforests snuggle shoulder to shoulder with sandy beaches. <\/p>\n
The Pacific Ocean, violent and unpredictable, beckons visitors to a shoreline littered with fallen trees and rocky islands just out of reach. <\/p>\n
It harbors a bit of magic and somehow the Kraken and Bigfoot don\u2019t feel like fairy tales in the greatness of Humboldt\u2019s often untamed wilderness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the setting in which Case Mandel and Lizandro Salazar V built their bond with cannabis. <\/p>\n
Before launching the county\u2019s first operationally licensed botanical extraction company, they spent years living out of their trucks in ancient forests, tending secret fields, and learning firsthand why the Emerald Triangle is the world\u2019s finest climate for cannabis cultivation. <\/p>\n
Mandel has already found success with Cannadips, the nation\u2019s first cannabis and CBD dip. <\/p>\n
As that brand continues to grow, he and Salazar are building a new kind of extract company. They\u2019re using single-source, flash-frozen, sun-grown buds to form the foundation of their live resin line \u2014 Arcata Fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this exclusive interview, we speak with Mandel and Salazar to discover their inspiration, their strategy, and what\u2019s next for their award-winning line of live resin extracts.<\/p>\n
Case Mandel: I was the first one of us actually involved in hydrocarbon extraction even though Lizandro and I were using bubble bags years before. <\/p>\n
I bought one of the first closed-loop extraction machines ever built in the early days of hydrocarbon extraction. After working in the traditional extraction market I met my wife. <\/p>\n
She gave me an ultimatum \u2014 if she was going to continue to spend time with me and look to build a family, I needed to stop working in a market that could jeopardize my freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luckily, I had just completed an MBA and California just passed prop 64 for recreational legalization, so I took my skill set to the newly legal market. <\/p>\n
My first step in creating the business was doing what I do best and connecting people. <\/p>\n
I went out and found a capital partner as well as a partner for cutting-edge custom extraction equipment. <\/p>\n
Then I brought in my high school best friend Lizandro [Salazar] to design and manage the project. He took it by the horns and we were able to become the first legal, operational extraction facility in Humboldt County. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Lizandro Salazar V: The aha moment was a little different for me. I was working on a cultivation premise, building it from scratch actually. <\/p>\n
Everyone was cultivating, but no one had a license because many were in the application process \u2014 at that time, the application process was as far as you could go. <\/p>\n
One morning we went down to the house to get our breakfast, and there was a huge convoy of sheriffs, the state water board, natural resources, fish and wildlife\u2026 all these people were there.<\/p>\n
The next thing I know there were shotguns in my face. Long story short, they let us go, but we ended up being the first farm in the application process in Humboldt County to get raided. <\/p>\n
When I saw that happen, I was like, \u201cWow, legal cultivation is a little bit sketchy.\u201d We need to look to manufacturing as a potential next step.<\/p>\n
Very shortly after we started, we realized the industry was commoditizing extremely quickly. Within a few months we saw prices start dropping, and as that drop started happening, margins changed, competition went up. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s truly where the transformation from ArcataX as a crude manufacturer turned into ArcataX as a premium, live resin manufacturer.<\/p>\n
LS: We\u2019re one of a very few companies that actually go to farms to harvest the crops ourselves. <\/p>\n
We started doing these harvesting SOPs, which were all about preserving the freshness of these aromas and profiles, to be representative of what that plant smells like while it\u2019s growing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Because of the scale of our equipment, we were also able to harvest and freeze within a very small amount of time, and also extract that material \u2014 sometimes the same day. <\/p>\n
If you\u2019re harvesting 2000 square feet, and it takes you two months to extract, well that\u2019s cool, but we would harvest a couple thousand square feet and extract it the following day. <\/p>\n
We were able to take these gardens all the way from peak ripeness to almost a finished product in very, very little time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then we started seeing the data around these oils being extremely high in terpene content, extremely diverse in types of terpenes, even terpenes you wouldn\u2019t ever see at other places. Then we realized this is something really special.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LS: I like to think of it like a perfect storm of knowing the right people, growing the right genetics, at the right time, at the right place. It\u2019s technology alongside SOPs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then we started really digging into \u2014 not only how fast can we extract this material, but how pure can we make it? <\/p>\n
That\u2019s where our solvent-free process became one of our foundational components. We use certain solvents that were chosen because of the selectivity they have when attracting these certain special cannabis compounds. <\/p>\n
Then, recovering all of that solvent out of the finished product to a non-detectable level.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LS: The plant itself has a code, or a recipe, or a certain fingerprint it\u2019s putting out. Every strain and every plant has a different one. <\/p>\n
Within that code, there are good things and bad things. Through our extraction process, we can pull out what we consider the best parts of that code.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t want to break that code into little chunks. <\/p>\n
We want to make sure it\u2019s cohesive because that terpene profile, that certain amount of potency and cannabinoids, types of cannabinoids and flavonoids, and all of these other compounds \u2026 those all are part of the musical orchestra that creates the symphony that is the experience that has given us award-winning results.<\/p>\n
What live resin does, is it captures that essence at the moment of harvest and preserves it almost in its entirety. <\/p>\n
When you open a jar or take a hit, you\u2019re basically getting that same experience as if you were walking to that farm, squeezing that flower, and smelling it yourself.<\/p>\n
LS: Systems of plants and animals typically work better when there\u2019s a diversity of different species occupying different parts of the three-dimensional environment. <\/p>\n
Our farms are usually surrounded by acres of forest. Our farmers typically plant tons of different types of species around their gardens that bring in predatory insects that eat pests.<\/p>\n
On the soil side, a lot of our farmers have been building their soil for decades and decades. These soils are native, and they\u2019re extremely nutrient rich.<\/p>\n
A lot of these soils, because of the water table and the proximity to the river, have an ability to wick up during the night and then down during the day. Our best farmers don\u2019t even have to irrigate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: Our win with the judges was a representation of the incredible starting material we\u2019ve been able to source as a result of the relationships we\u2019ve developed over the past twenty years. <\/p>\n
That material, coupled with the SOPs we\u2019ve developed over hundreds of thousands of pounds of extraction, gave us the advantage.<\/p>\n
LS: There\u2019s a sentence you\u2019ll hear around the industry: fire in, fire out. <\/p>\n
You can\u2019t get a good finished product unless you start with something good. Arcata Fire is from our best of our best, premium crops that we won\u2019t sell to anyone else because it is so coveted by us. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s all single source, meaning it all comes from the same place. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s all single batch, meaning that I don\u2019t mix and blend different strains together. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s all 100% live resin, which means everything that\u2019s in each product is 100% derived from that flash-frozen material. <\/p>\n
There are all these little things that come together and create a place where the consumer is saying, \u201cWow,
this is the best cannabis product I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d and we see that now almost every day. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s just taking California by storm and we\u2019re really proud of it. \u03d6<\/p>\n