The first hands-on cannabis training in Europe

Added on 18 August 2023

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The first hands-on cannabis training in Europe

Operational Excellence Training introduced by the teams of Innexo and Cultivators. Cultivators and Innexo join forces and pioneer a new section in the cannabis education sector. Together, they offer a new hands-on cannabis training model that is unique in the European cannabis industry. “We have been receiving a lot of requests from cannabis companies that want us to train their new staff. Unfortunately, that is not possible until they are up and running and have living plants in their facility. Now, we can do it here in the greenhouses at Innexo.” That is how the new Operational Excellence Training was presented by Dominique van Gruisen (Innexo) and Sonny Moerenhout (Cultivators) at the first Acceleration Day held for Innexo’s Acceleration Platform for Innovation (API).

A tour of Innexo’s greenhouse as part of the Acceleration Day, July 202

Need for practical knowledge
According to Dominique and Sonny, the medical cannabis industry has many similarities to the pharmaceutical industry, having some of the same stringent requirements. We thought, “So how does the pharmaceutical industry train its personnel?”. If a pharmaceutical company hires anyone, they get a basic third-party training at specialized training institutes such as the Biotech Training Facility in Leiden (NL). “There, they will learn everything about GMP standards. Not just the theory, but the practical application as well.” Such practical knowledge is exactly what should be improved in the medical cannabis industry, Dominique and Sonny say. “Few people really know what it is like to work under a GMP certification and to work in clean rooms. In a GMP environment, there is a lot of risk involved when it comes to training personnel. In the worst-case scenario, the company could lose a batch due to improper handling of the plants or contamination. With our Operational Excellence Training, new staff only comes into the facility after they have already some basic theoretical and practical knowledge. We help to derisk other companies’ operations by training their staff for them, and there is no better way to learn than through hands-on experience.”