The Numbers That Defend the Claim

Documented yield from actual operational runs — not laboratory projections, not modelled estimates. These numbers carry the weight of the physics, and they matter because they are the foundation of every unit economics conversation in solventless cannabis.

10%
canonical demonstrated yield on cured trim
(three independent test days · CV 3.4%)
22–55
g/lb cured trim supporting band
(4.85% – 12.12%)
45–113
g/lb on fresh frozen
(9.92% – 24.91%)

Why Fresh Frozen Outperforms Cured Trim

The differential is not a machine advantage — it is a material property. Fresh-frozen material has not undergone the drying and curing process that degrades trichome heads, reduces terpene content, and diminishes the physical integrity of the stalks. When you feed fresher material into a gentler separation process, you get more of what you were trying to preserve.

Cured trim carries degradation that no processing method can reverse. The 22–55 g/lb range reflects that reality honestly. The upper end of that range — 55 g/lb — represents well-preserved trim from high-trichome cultivars processed under optimal conditions. The lower end represents older material, lower-density genetics, or trim that has been mishandled prior to processing.

The critical insight: the same architecture that produces 45–113 g/lb on fresh-frozen material produces 22–55 g/lb on cured trim. The architecture does not change. The material determines the ceiling. The process determines how close you get to it.

How to Read Yield Data Without Being Misled

Yield claims in the solventless industry are frequently presented as single numbers — “we got 7%” or “our best run hit 15%.” Single numbers are not yield data. They are yield events. The question that matters is: what is the floor, what is the ceiling, and what is the documented run-to-run variance?

A process with high average yield and high variance is a process that depends on luck or skill to achieve its best numbers. A process with lower average yield and near-zero variance is a process you can build a production schedule around. For licensed producers planning commercial-scale solventless operations, repeatability is not a secondary consideration — it is the primary one.

Recipe-driven separation collapses run-to-run variance. Same input, same recipe, same conditions — same output. That is defensible to industry benchmarks. That is what moves solventless cannabis from craft output to documented production.

The Medical and Pharmaceutical Threshold

For producers on a pharmaceutical pathway, yield data must meet a higher standard than “here are our numbers.” Pharmaceutical documentation requires demonstrated repeatability across batches, traceability from input to output, and a process architecture that can be validated independently. Ice-water processing cannot meet that standard — not because of the numbers, but because the variables that determine the numbers are not controlled.

When the conditions are held constant by the system rather than managed by the operator, the output becomes documentable in the way pharmaceutical production requires. The medical-grade configuration of Abzu’s Refinery is built to the pharmaceutical-grade standard for cold water trichome processing. The yield data above was produced by the same architecture.

What It Proves for Unit Economics

Less loss between input and output. More output per labour-hour. Numbers that are defensible to auditors, investors, and regulators — not anecdote. When margin returns to the operator, medical and pharmaceutical-grade audiences engage. That is the commercial case for understanding what your yield data actually says — and what the process producing it is actually capable of.