A professional cannabis trimming service can be helpful if you don’t have the space, time, equipment, or personnel to complete this vital task in-house. Or perhaps your farm or facility is outgrowing its current capacity and you need a helping hand to prevent bottlenecks in your workflow.
As you search for the right post-processing partner, it’s important to know upfront that not all trim services are equal. While there are a ton of trim service companies out there to choose from, the cannabis processing partner you choose will have a huge impact on the quality and shelf appeal of your trimmed buds. This ultimately affects your bottom line.
Typical Services Offered by Trimming Companies
Cannabis processing companies typically offer any or all of the following pre and post-harvest solutions:
- Pruning
- Harvesting
- Bucking and sorting
- Hand trimming
- Machine trimming
- Machine trimming with manual touch-ups
- Quality control
- Bagging and packaging
- Distribution
- Processing dried flower into joints and pre-rolls
Many cannabis trimming services will come to your facility and bring all of the required equipment with them. Prices are typically based on the volume of material you need processed and the distance of your facility from the company’s headquarters.
Hand Trim vs Machine Trim vs Machine Trim With Touch-Ups
When choosing a trimming service, you’ll need to determine whether you want your buds to be hand trimmed or machine trimmed. Many companies also offer machine trimming followed by a craft manicure.
With great machine-trimming options nowadays, it isn’t really cost-effective to have your buds trimmed entirely by hand. Bladeless CO2 trimming machines like The Original Resinator can get you to a hand-trim-quality result in a fraction of the time with little to no touch-ups required, which depends on the bud structure itself usually and the operator’s preference.
Equipment & Technology
Technology in the cannabis industry is coming on in leaps and bounds and you should choose a trimming company that uses the most up-to-date trimming tech.
Based on years of experience and laboratory analyses, we can say with confidence that Cryo-Trimming with CO2 is the gentlest and most effective way we’ve seen to machine-trim buds while preserving cannabinoids and weight.
If your trimming service doesn’t use Cryo-Trimming with CO2 or know what Cryo-Trimming is, they aren’t up with the times. Either suggest to your current service that they look into trimming with CO2 or look for a trimming company that does.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Needs
A cannabis trimming service can be great if you pull an especially big harvest down and need some extra hands to process it. However, if your grow operation or facility is expanding, it’s worth investing in trimming equipment to save on labor costs (either third-party or in-house) in the long term.
If you’re serious about quality as well as efficiency, a bladeless trimmer like The Original Resinator is the way to go. Because it uses CO2 and rotation rather than blades, The Original Resinator is gentle on buds and conserves each one’s natural shape just like a hand trim.
In addition to saving you space, time, and labor costs on hand trimming (which costs just under $16 per hour, per trimmer on average according to 2023 information from Zipcruiter), our OG, XL, and XLS Pro Resinators can be used for biomass reduction and to make solventless (live) extracts—instantly expanding your product range:
- Swap the trimming screen for a micron-rated screen for dry sift or fill the chamber with ice and water to make bubble hash.
- Pair a Resinator with a freeze dryer to implement our award-winning Crop-to-Cure® process and upgrade to live-dried buds.
Recommended Cannabis Trimming Service in California
If you do have short-term trimming needs and are located in California, our sister company Industry Processing Solutions offers a full suite of per-piece and a-la-carte solutions for your post-harvest needs:
- Cryo-Trim® with CO2 at a competitive per-lb rate
- Cryo-Trim® with a hand-manicure finish
- On-site trichome collection with Cryo-Sieve®
- 24-hour curing service with Crop-to-Cure®
- Joint mixing and joint mix preparation
- Onsite training, education, and consulting services (T.E.C.™ services)
To learn more about these services and how they compare, schedule a free 30-minute demo and the team will show you what our equipment is capable of.
Invest in the Best
The choice of a trimming service or trimming equipment for your business can have a huge impact on your bottom line. For the best results, choose a solution that’s reliable, efficient, uses cutting-edge CO2 technology, and turns out buds that are visually beautiful.
If you’re not completely satisfied with your current provider, ask us how The Original Resinator could revolutionize your post-harvest workflow and save you space, time, and money. Satisfied customers across the world rely on their Resinator machines for their trimming needs because they’re the most cost-effective option while maintaining premium quality outputs.
