As the cannabis industry readies for the growth surge rescheduling could trigger, it’s getting dangerously close to losing its grip on the craft sector.

We are entering the era of the connoisseur, where consumer palates are becoming increasingly sophisticated and demand products that provide a full-spectrum craft experience. They understand the nuances of cannabis and what defines quality.

Quality means a well-preserved flower, free of contaminants, that delivers all the plant’s compounds, creating an entourage effect of benefits. It’s that kind of experience that keeps consumers coming back to a brand again and again, and what patients depend on for reliable therapeutic effects.

Cannabis, like produce, must be kept within a controlled temperature range or it rapidly deteriorates. Leave a bag of weed in your car on a hot day, and you will find it colorless, flavorless, and weak. Degradation accelerates quickly once cannabis is exposed to temperatures above 70°F. It is also highly sensitive to light and humidity. Continuous cold chain conditions are needed to prevent degradation and preserve the plant’s full value from the field to the shelf.

If the industry doesn’t up its game on preservation practices across the supply chain, it risks losing its craft flower altogether and becoming a commodity category with only biomass to offer.

While the industry has made progress in preservation protocols across cultivation, post-harvest handling, curing, and extraction, the final stretch from warehouse and distribution to retail remains riddled with gaps. It’s the “last mile” where product freshness is getting lost.

Stop Putting Lipstick on a Pig

It is well documented and scientifically proven that terpenes have physiological effects and are used to treat sleep disorders, anxiety, pain, and inflammation. It is also known that terpenes and other low-concentration metabolites are extremely volatile under certain conditions, such as exposure to light, heat, and time, which causes cannabis to deteriorate.

According to Alec Dixon, cofounder of SC Labs, “Once the terps are gone, it no longer is craft, and it’s now biomass, and everyone and their mother has biomass.”

Dixon, whose lab has long served as the official testing partner and judging panel for the Emerald Cup, says the data is clear: terpene levels distinguish great cannabis from mediocre product. “If the average cup entry is about 1.4% terpene content, the winners are all 3% to 5%—that’s when you find the most stinky and sticky bud that could stick to a window,” he says. Yet by the time flower reaches the retail shelf, it often measures 1% or less, and pre-rolls average 0.5% or less.

The culprit, Dixon says, is the industry’s lack of cold chain handling. Grinding and packaging flower at room temperature causes terpenes to evaporate. As a result, many producers resort to adding artificial or non-botanical flavors to “juice” the aroma and mask quality loss. “It’s like putting lipstick on a pig,” he says. “You’re taking something that once might’ve been great and covering up the fact that it’s lost its character.”

Dixon explains that terpenes don’t just define flavor, they influence the overall effect and quality of the high. Two strains with identical THC levels can deliver completely different experiences depending on their terpene content. Once those terpenes dissipate, the product becomes indistinguishable from distillate, stripped of its unique entourage effect.

When cannabis is harvested, dried, cured, and stored in cold conditions—below 65°F—and maintained through a refrigerated supply chain, terpene preservation can reach up to 5%. Improper temperature control can also cause weed to mold if the water content and temperature are not controlled during the post-harvest process.

Vertically Integrated Companies Have the Advantage

Dixon says vertically integrated operators—those who manage cultivation, processing, and retail under one roof—have a distinct advantage when it comes to terpene preservation. “They can control all the variables,” he explains. These companies often partner with SC Labs to conduct terpene-preservation trials that measure how well their processes protect volatile compounds throughout the supply chain.

The testing involves taking chemical “fingerprints” of a single harvest at multiple points—from post-cure storage to trimming, packaging, transport, and eventually retail. By comparing terpene and cannabinoid content at each stage, operators can pinpoint precisely where degradation occurs.

Dixon says this data-driven approach helps companies refine their standard operating procedures to minimize terpene loss at every step. “You might start with 4% terpenes and end up with 1.5% by the time it hits the shelf,” he says. “Now, we can identify where that drop happened and fix it.”

Setting The Standards

Darwin Millard, Technical Director at CSQ Quality and Standards, says the cannabis industry needs to do a better job of using a cold chain infrastructure to prevent contamination and product degradation. “Our new standards guidelines explicitly cover temperature and atmospheric-controlled storage within the cannabis and cannabinoid product environment,” he explains.

He points out that cannabis products, though generally safe, can become compromised when exposed to temperature and moisture fluctuations common in refrigerators and freezers. “If containers aren’t properly sealed, condensation and humidity changes can alter the environment inside and impact the quality of the extract,” he says.

Proper thawing procedures are also imperative, especially as many manufacturers freeze extracts for long-term storage. Millard suggests borrowing best practices from the food safety industry to establish foundational cold chain protocols. CSQ’s standards now include explicit requirements for both temperature and atmospheric monitoring and control to maintain ideal conditions during drying, curing, and storage—such as maintaining a stable humidity or vapor pressure to prevent mold growth.

He also warns about the additional risks in the transportation side of the supply chain. A frozen shipment that thaws and refreezes due to a power failure or improper temperature control can ruin high-value material. To manage this, Millard recommends adopting food-industry concepts such as mean kinetic temperature, which measures cumulative thermal exposure rather than one-time fluctuations. “Instead of automatically failing a batch that briefly rises a few degrees, mean kinetic temperature gives you a more realistic buffer and helps determine whether the product actually experienced a damaging thaw,” he explains.

Millard says there are existing tools that have already proven effective in food and pharmaceutical logistics. “There are inexpensive kinetic temperature sensors that can be placed directly on a product to show if it went outside its safety range during shipping,” he notes. “They’re the same kind of indicators used for fragile or temperature-sensitive items in other industries, and we should be using them in cannabis, too.”

Millard says the challenge in getting operators on either side of the cannabis industry to certify to standards is that they feel it’s not required and don’t see the need to incur extra expenses, given the financial strains and burdens they’re already facing.

Whose Fault Is It?

Liability and product recalls due to degradation are appearing in headlines more often. Whether caused by mold or oxidation, quality failures are becoming a serious operational and financial risk across the supply chain. With each recall, evidence increasingly points to improper storage and temperature fluctuations during distribution or at retail, rather than cultivation practices.

This raises a thorny legal question: If a brand can prove its product left the facility in the condition stated on the COA, but it ends up in retail degraded, who is liable?

Is it the retailer who failed to maintain proper vault conditions, the distributor who transported the product outside its safe range, or the brand whose packaging didn’t adequately protect the flower? In at least one recent case, a packaging manufacturer has been blamed for ruined cannabis. The industry’s lack of cold chain SOPs will only lead to increased exposure to lawsuits, insurance claims, and costly recalls.

Packaging Preservation Innovations

A critical element of cold chain success is preservation packaging. Many products on shelves today are not properly sealed, and you can often smell valuable terpenes escaping before the jar is even opened.

To combat this, some cannabis manufacturers are adopting nitrogen-flush technology, long used in the food and pharmaceutical industries as a preservation method. In this system, a small drop of liquid nitrogen is released into each jar just before sealing. As the nitrogen rapidly evaporates into gas, it displaces the oxygen inside the container. With oxygen removed, oxidation slows dramatically, minimizing terpene loss and helping preserve aroma, flavor, and potency until the jar is opened.

Samuel Morris, a former designer and manufacturer in the medical market, brought his expertise into cannabis. He developed and patented the PopVac, a super-sealing jar, and built an automated manufacturing line that fills the jars using a nitrogen-flush process. This technology is still evolving as it relates to cannabis preservation, but it represents a promising advancement in protecting high-quality flower.

“The bottom line is that you have to be very serious about your packaging and seal, because it’s everything,” Morris says. “Your weed dries, your cannabinoid profile changes, and your buzz changes.”

Grove Bags takes a similar technology-driven approach with its modified-atmosphere packaging (MAP), designed to maintain quality and consistency from post-harvest to the consumer. “A lot of companies just make bags or jars,” says Lance Lambert, CMO of Grove Bags. “We’re really technology first. Our packaging just happens to be the best format to deliver that technology.”

Developed by growers, the company’s multilayer film creates a self-regulating microclimate that uses the plant’s own off-gassing to stabilize its environment. “When you put the flower in, it’s already off-gassing CO₂,” Lambert explains. “Our technology allows CO₂ to displace oxygen, making it a non-oxygen-rich environment that prevents oxidation and degradation.” The MAP system also maintains an ideal relative humidity of 58 to 62 percent, balancing excess moisture while preserving the integrity of cannabinoids and terpenes. “It’s essentially auto-curing,” Lambert says. “No more burping jars or babysitting your cure. You just put the flower in the bag and let it do its job.”

Grove Bag’s packaging allows growers to continue curing cannabis during transport. “You can literally cure in transit,” Lambert says. “No longer are you wasting space in your operation for two, three, or four weeks to cure.” The innovation has already gained traction among licensed producers in Europe. “They realized that while their product is in transit or waiting to hit the shelf, it’s still curing,” Lambert explains. “So instead of losing time, they’re actually improving potency, consistency, and overall product quality.”

The Last Mile

As one of the few cannabis-specific warehousing and transportation companies operating across multiple states, California, Nevada, and New York, Nabis has had to custom-design its own cold chain system to maintain product quality across diverse climates and long transit routes. COO Will Brophy explained that while most brands understand the need to keep edibles like gummies and chocolates cool to prevent melting, few realize that flower and pre-rolls also require climate control to protect terpenes, which begin to degrade around 70°F.

To prevent this, Nabis keeps all warehouses between 62 and 67 degrees and closely monitors humidity levels. “We’re pretty uptight about keeping our warehouses the right temperature, and making sure the humidity is correct,” Brophy said. “We don’t want humidity too low and drying out the flower, but we also don’t want it too high and causing degradation in other forms.” Maintaining those conditions is particularly challenging in California, where most industrial warehouse spaces are not built with insulation or HVAC systems, which adds high costs.

Infrastructure is both the foundation and the biggest hurdle for companies like Nabis. “One of the hardest parts is the lack of access to traditional infrastructure solutions. Good luck getting a construction loan in cannabis or finding developers willing to work with you,” says Brophy. “Major property holders often cannot engage with you if their mortgages are bank-backed.” Finding partners with experience in cannabis cold-chain logistics is like finding a needle in a haystack, he added.

Most of their deliveries are made in Sprinter vans outfitted with refrigeration units and additional insulation. “A standard short-distance delivery may do well in some temperatures,” Brophy noted, “but try driving a Sprinter in a Las Vegas summer and see what your flower looks like on the other side, unless you’ve got the right vehicle for it.”

Nabis also uses thermal bags and electric coolers for long-haul deliveries to ensure concentrates and extracts remain stable, some of which require temperatures between 0 and 30 degrees. For particularly sensitive products such as blonde hash, which oxidizes and turns brown within 45 minutes at room temperature, the company uses walk-in freezers for storage and transfers the product directly into cold bags for delivery.

Brophy believes the next challenge will be getting everybody across the supply chain to cooperate and obtain the necessary equipment for the baseline. He thinks Nabis is more the exception than the norm for distributors. “We’re a ways off from there, because there’s a lot of folks that are still not storing in insulated warehouses,” he adds.

An Outsider’s Advice

Marty Khait, cofounder of Yukon, a national cold chain logistics company, says the cannabis industry can learn a lot from other perishable goods sectors. For smaller operators, he recommends using self-storage-style cold warehouses that rent individual refrigeration units at a lower cost. These units can be divided into temperature zones for flower, concentrates, beverages, or edibles.

He also advises adopting widely used monitoring technologies that track temperature and alert operators when products exceed safe thresholds. “There are simple, inexpensive solutions like temperature-triggered labels and data loggers that provide transparency throughout transport,” Khait noted.

To manage varying product requirements, Khait suggests building or partnering with specialized facilities—one dedicated to beverages, another to baked goods, and so on—or designing a single facility with separate zones for each product category. Until the industry consolidates around a more efficient system, he said, “the reality is that companies will need to solve cold chain challenges one piece at a time.”

Retail Is The Biggest Stumbling Block

The weakest link in the cannabis cold chain is retail. While many states require cold vault storage systems designed for preservation, few retailers fully understand the consequences of ignoring proper temperature SOPs, or what that neglect could mean for the future of craft-quality cannabis.

Steve Garner, VP of Cultivation at vertically integrated MSO Ethos Cannabis, is concerned. “Quality loss can happen at any step of the process between propagation and consumption. At Ethos, we have several controls in place to protect product quality in our stores. Having a separate HVAC zone for vault controls seems like an exorbitant luxury, but it’s crucial for cool storage.” With a dedicated HVAC system, the team can set vault temperatures independently from the rest of the store. “Our vaults have temperature and humidity sensors so the inventory team can be alerted to anything out of order. Typically, they control to 65°F, which is a decent compromise between product quality and employee comfort. Concentrate products, particularly solventless, should always be stored in a fridge,” he explained.

Vireo Health, an MSO with 48 retail dispensaries across seven states, recognizes the importance of maintaining terpene integrity and has developed TerpSafe, a patent-pending packaging technology used for its premium house brands. The system incorporates a sealed compartment at the bottom of the container that stores terpenes, slowly releasing them over time to replace those that volatilize each time the jar is opened. By maintaining a consistent terpene-rich atmosphere inside the package, TerpSafe helps stabilize aroma, flavor, and overall freshness throughout the product’s shelf life.

The Economics Of Not Having A Cold Chain

As consumers become more educated and demand premium cannabis experiences, the industry must recognize the consumer and economic value of standardizing cold chain SOPS: terpene loss equates to financial loss. A batch that arrives at retail with diminished aroma, flavor, or potency often loses its premium status, sells more slowly, and may require discounting or fails to create repeat purchases. Consumers simply won’t return to a brand or strain if they aren’t satisfied with the experience. Over time, widespread terpene degradation threatens to collapse the craft market entirely, pushing cannabis into a commodity landscape where unique genetics, cultivation expertise, and small-batch artistry are lost.

In the end, it’s the increasingly educated consumer who will force the industry to respond by demanding clean, quality cannabis and pressure operators to treat cannabis like produce. In addition, as federal rescheduling draws near, pathways for cannabis-based medicines will open, making the need for consistent, high-quality, properly preserved flower even more urgent, as expectations and regulations will most likely tighten. Cold chain infrastructure doesn’t add cost; it protects the future of both craft cannabis and cannabis medicine.