In this episode of FAQ with AGIQ, we'll discuss some of the most effective strategies for scaling a facility. With the current challenges of depressed flower prices and a difficult equity and investment market, there is a growing need for facilities to start small and gradually expand over time.
Episode Transcription:
In this episode of FAQ with AGIQ, I'm going to talk about some of the best ways to scale a facility. We're getting asked this question more and more these days, in particular, again, because of depressed flower prices and because of a really challenging equity and investment market. It means that more facilities are wanting to start small and expand in time.
Now, when you scale a facility, the conversation around scaling really needs to start with the first phase of your building. If you maxed out the square footage on your lot, it's going to be really hard for you to scale up in the future. And so, it really starts in the planning and leasing stage of your first building.
Do you have room to expand? Is there adjacent property you can buy or have already bought? Do you have enough utility on site to be able to scale up appropriately, or does your local utility have the ability to give you more on a reasonable timeline? So, it really is a holistic conversation that starts early. But ultimately, once you start heading down the path of phasing a building, it's relatively easy to do so long as your equipment choice up front was something that is inherently scalable.
Unitary equipment or a decoupled system are both systems that are inherently scalable. You can always buy more for a single room, or for a pair of rooms, or for three or four rooms. It's much more difficult to scale a central plant. The economies of scale available on a central plant require you to basically buy the whole thing from the get go.
Your piping runs need to be full size from the get go, depending on how your building's laid out. There's a variety of things there that make scaling actually quite difficult. So, you know, from the first step of scaling a building, it's the initial plan. Do you have the building? Do you have the land? Do you have the power? Do you have labor force available to scale appropriately?
If all of those things are met, then it's all about picking a contractor that that can build in phases for you and picking in equipment type that scales appropriately.
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