The Start of ENTEXS

When ENTEXS arrived on the scene, the extraction industry was young. Methodologies hadn’t been streamlined, and processes were more cobbled-together than technical. As a new extraction operation, the team from ENTEXS found out the hard way just how inefficient it all was. 

The first and most apparent inefficiency came from the lack of complete systems on the market. Each system needed to be assembled of components from various manufacturers. Of course, this meant that compatibility was far from guaranteed. Most components are required to be retrofitted together. The process involved making components that operate with varying flow rates, temperatures, and throughputs function together. “Function” is the key word there. These weren’t hyper-efficient systems that could be dialed to exact specifications. They just kind of worked. Here at ENTEXS, we call that old process “Frankensteining” a system. 

Post-processing only made matters worse. Winterization, the process of using super-chilled ethanol to separate out unwanted plant constituents, significantly increased processing times, labor, and required additional equipment. Then, rotovaping was required to remove any lingering solvent from the product, taking even more time and losing solvent that could otherwise have been recycled in the process, not to mention the hassle of pulling the oil from processing and the risks and exposure that comes with it. 

Because of all the inefficiency and additional processing required, none of these systems produced what would be considered today a high throughput. They were generally quite slow, and the lack of efficiency caused a fairly consistent loss of what could have been a usable product. 

Then, there was the cost in both time and overall effort to run these systems. None of these systems were fully automated. What automation did exist was minimal and lacking in its overall benefits because the human intervention was always ultimately required. The more hands-on processes are needed, the greater the safety risks, risks of contamination in the product, and the overall inefficiency. This hands-on approach also led to serious inconsistencies in product quality.