PORTLAND, Maine — Quietly, the Washington County compost maker Coast of Maine Organic Products has developed a “supersoil” to cater to medical marijuana growers, opening the door to a new and rapidly growing market.
The company’s gentle rollout of its supersoil Stonington Blend is one part of its potential growth, building upon revenue that’s already up 18 percent this fiscal year, partly driven by rising demand for organic food and products.
Sales growth for Coast of Maine’s flagship lobster compost has pushed the company with 15 to 20 employees — depending on the season — to start refining production methods and seek investors to acquire new facilities in Greater Portland and the mid-Atlantic possibly before the end of this year.
“We’re very interested in having another facility in Maine that’s down this way,” Cameron Bonsey, the company’s director of marketing, said in an interview at the company’s Portland offices.
Such expansions would reduce shipping costs and open new markets for raw materials, including lobster shells, that Coast of Maine uses to make compost at its processing facility in Marion, between Calais and Machias. Bonsey said the move wouldn’t divert raw materials from its existing plant.
“Sourcing lobster from the Portland area becomes too expensive to bring all the way up to Marion,” Bonsey said.
Those shells break down and shrink by about 30 percent in the composting process, he said, amplifying the cost the company has to watch most closely: shipping.
“When you have bags of compost that you’re shipping, that’s just a huge part of the cost,” he said. “The only way to offset that is to set up other facilities.”
With just one more facility in Maine, Bonsey said the company estimates it could grow by another 30 percent or 40 percent by distributing its composts more broadly to independent garden centers throughout New England.
The company’s also revamping its website to boost online sales, but Bonsey said it will still focus on distributing through independent garden centers that its business has been built on.
“What we need to do is take care of our own backyard, keep increasing the quality and keep taking care of the customers that started with us,” Bonsey said.
The ‘craft beer’ of compost
The other component of the expansion search, Bonsey said, is increased quality control with a product that’s inherently difficult to keep consistent.
“[Composting] is like being a chef, but imagine that every time you go to make a meal you have slightly different inputs,” Bonsey said. “The moisture and the oven temperature varies and you have to come out with a consistent blend.”
That becomes even more important, he said, as the company looks to sell to professional customers such as medical marijuana growers.
“It would be hard for us to get involved with a high-volume producer,” Bonsey said. “We’re like a craft beer brewer.”
Maintaining consistent quality was a trial this past winter for employees in Marion, Bonsey said, with about 200 inches of snow in parts of Washington County.
“They still did their jobs and got the stuff bagged,” Bonsey said. “They are smart and tough.”
As the company seeks expansion locations, Bonsey said, Coast of Maine still has a “commitment to that area and the employees” and that the Marion facility will remain its “heart and soul.”
And that’s where the company has developed its Stonington blend, which it has distributed in batches to medical marijuana caregivers to get feedback before marketing efforts intensify.
Going professional
Coast of Maine’s marketing efforts have something in common with medical marijuana growers and caregivers, where there’s “still a tendency to be secretive,” Bonsey said.
In the past months, the company has brought medical marijuana growers to its Marion facility to show them how it composts and to solicit their input on a soil blend that’s largely plug-and-play for customers who know what they expect from a product.
“Having a soil that comes with almost all of the biology that they need already … that’s a big savings to them,” Bonsey said.
For now, Bonsey said, the company is focused on reaching out to smaller-scale medical marijuana caregivers in Maine. Larger-scale dispensaries, he said, pose a harder sell.
“They have a specific process, and with the value of the crop they’re not going to make a change unless something goes wrong,” Bonsey said.
Medical marijuana is legal in 23 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and in Maine made up a more than $5 million industry last year. With all of that money involved, the stakes for both quality control and willingness to pay more for that quality are higher.
“If I’m working with someone who is growing for a bunch of patients and he can’t get my product to start his grow on time, that’s a problem,” Bonsey said. “It’s a very local learning process — we’re focusing on Maine and we’re learning about this marketplace that is different than what we’ve worked with before.”
To help make that case, the company’s started to solicit testimonials from growers who have tried the soil that comes at a price of $34.99 for a 1.5-cubic-yard bag.
David Thibeault, who grows marijuana for himself to alleviate pain from a spinal injury, was the first grower to provide video testimony for the Stonington soil, which has its own video playlist on the company’s YouTube channel.
“Their care is more intense than just about anything else that I see out there,” Bonsey said.
The company’s still implementing feedback from its early batch of growers and isn’t hurting for new revenue sources, but Bonsey said he sees potential in the expansion.
“I think it’s possible that it could become our most successful product,” Bonsey said.