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This week, Elizabeth Corbett, president of enterprise sales at AE Global, joins the podcast to discuss all things packaging and why the industry needs to stop focusing on bargain hunters looking for high-potency products if it wants to grow.
Elizabeth Corbett has spent her career developing packaging solutions for many industries, primarily premium products for brands like Tiffany, Estée Lauder and Starbucks.
When Washington legalized recreational cannabis in 2012, a colleague went to work for Tilray, which was the largest cannabis company in the world. He needed to figure out how to properly package weed, so he called Corbett.
Corbett is a strong believer in the power of the plant, but she wishes that state regulators would work together to make things better for industry stakeholders from a cost perspective. For example, if she works with an MSO that operates in 12 different states, packaging gets tricky. When she makes flexible pouches for the company's edibles, she needs to design pouches with 12 different types of language to remain compliant. So, instead of having ten flavors with ten SKUs, the operator has 120 SKUs, which is incredibly wasteful.
She also hopes to see more automation in the market, though she understands that, given the currently regulatory landscape, it doesn't make sense to invest in automation in smaller markets. Corbett is also driven to further the industry's sustainability initiatives and AE Global has invested heavily to create more sustainable packaging.
When it comes to growing the cannabis market, Corbett says the industry will remain stagnant if it continues to focus on consumers looking for "financially accessible" products with high THC—she says the market already had every guy who wants to get so high that he can't get off the couch. She says the future of cannabis growth is her mom, people who have never been high before, but want something that can help them to sleep, or a veteran who wants to get off of opioids. For them, the industry still holds great potential.
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