Revolutionizing Cannabis Rolling Papers: Unveiling a 400-Year Legacy of Quality and Innovation Alex Boone, the managing director at Botani, discusses the history and expertise of his parent company, which has been involved in paper making for over 400 years. Botani focuses on providing premium botanical hemp and hemp rolling papers to the cannabis industry, offering lightweight rolling papers and hemp wraps that enhance the smoking experience. He joins Dan Humiston to talk about working with B2B customers, including white label converters and brand owners, providing them with sustainable solutions and helping them navigate the process of starting a brand in the cannabis market. Produced by PodConx MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Alex Boone - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-boone-1b2a8b13/ Botani - https://botani.com/ SWM International & Neenah, Inc. recently combined to become Mativ (NYSE: MATV) Recorded on Squadcast - https://squadcast.fm/
Revolutionizing Cannabis Rolling Papers: Unveiling a 400-Year Legacy of Quality and Innovation
Alex Boone, the managing director at Botani, discusses the history and expertise of his parent company, which has been involved in paper making for over 400 years. Botani focuses on providing premium botanical hemp and hemp rolling papers to the cannabis industry, offering lightweight rolling papers and hemp wraps that enhance the smoking experience. He joins Dan Humiston to talk about working with B2B customers, including white label converters and brand owners, providing them with sustainable solutions and helping them navigate the process of starting a brand in the cannabis market.
MJBulls - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Alex Boone - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-boone-1b2a8b13/
Botani - https://botani.com/
SWM International & Neenah, Inc. recently combined to become Mativ (NYSE: MATV)
Recorded on Squadcast - https://squadcast.fm/
[00:00:00]
today on the MJ Bulls Raising Cannabis Capital Podcast, we are joined by Alex Boone, the managing director at Bhutani. Alex, welcome to the show.
I appreciate it. Great to be
Well, I appreciate you taking the time out today to speak with us, and I'm tempted to jump right in and start talking about premium botanical hemp and hemp rolling papers. But our listeners really need to hear the backstory, I feel, and we, we really should start with a quick overview of your parent company, which was founded over 400 years ago.
And, and you heard that correctly, this company was founded, I believe in 1545. I mean, it just blows my mind. Tell us a little bit about S WM and, and how we got into the, the cannabis business.
Yes, certainly the legacy goes back 400. I wouldn't say the legal entity is 400 years old, but the legacy and the roots of the company certainly do. And it goes back to the original paper making in Southern [00:01:00] France we had a facility in malice, just north of Avenue. Y'all making paper for the Pope and when they was there, no seriously it was parchment made by hand and.
Certainly far different than what we do today with big paper machines and high speed and all. Yeah, sure. We've part organization. Matt is a was formed newly last year with S WM International, which is my parent company, and Nina Paper came together, which we were once sister companies at one point long time ago, but going to s wm, we've been involved in paper making.
Especially for the tobacco industry for many, many years. And that's where our roots in legacy go back to. So in this particular area of, of cannabis and cannabinoid, we're talking about rolling papers. So last year we celebrated 150 years of a rolling paper [00:02:00] factory. And this year we have another part of our factory of the process that was invented for me to be able to make these temp wrappers 60 years at one of our factories in, in France as well for recon, reconstituted process of botanicals.
So that's really where our history stems from. More closer to home in North America. We have a facility in Anchor New York that's been continuous operations since pre-Revolutionary War. So really we do have a lot of history. Paper making truly is an art form and we've had a lot of evolutions of machines as we've gone through these factories over the years, but certainly.
That's one of the things that we can rely on. What I wanna say about Botani is that our legacy that was born out of a lot of history is we've now birthed a new company, a new market brand for cannabis that allows us to have a [00:03:00] dedicated team that listened to the needs of the cannabis consumer, and then we can draw on our legacy and expertise to bring that to market.
As new companies start scaling, which they will eventually, we have that know-how, that understanding of how to scale with our customers and help, bring them to market in a bigger way.
That's super exciting. When I think of rolling paper is like most people, I think of just a thin piece of paper from one of the brands that have been around forever.
But you've taken it to a whole nother level. What differentiates you from, all the household brands , that we know of and we've seen forever?
Yeah, sure. So just to keep in mind, we help make other brands be successful. We are a B2B company, so we're making roll goods into Bobbins, and we sell to a lot of the big brands all already into the market, especially on the rolling paper side. So we help make them [00:04:00] successful and the reason we don't have a brand ourselves, And that's why customers like to deal with us, is we keep, can keep the anonymity and we're not competing.
We're complimenting, we're bringing new ideas, new things to market. So when we look at rolling papers, which has been around a lot longer than our, our hemp wraps specific to our New York facility. We have a full range of basis weight going down to super light, super thin, different furnishes colors unbleached, natural looking, organic bio, all those things.
And out of a mill that's been in existence for 150 years, quality is number one. And so quality of papers on a lightweight roll, your own paper is paramount. And so when we're talking about. The rolling industry, cannabis slow burn, great taste or, or should I say from a [00:05:00] taste perspective, minimal taste impact to the flour.
In which you are smoking. That's why light is so important on rolling papers that we believe we have a big repertoire for our customers to build their brands with so that they can go out, market their own, own, know-how
Yeah, that,
and own brand.
that makes a lot of sense. Lan, you, you mentioned in your, in your New York facility that the, the hemp, the hemp wraps.
Yes. So to, to make it a little clear, so Botani was born originally not from the rolling papers, which is from our legacy, but Botani was in 20, what was it, late mid 2018 when the farm bill was coming up. We know how to take Botanical MA materials and reconstitute them into paper. So, for instance, tobacco, we invented the process to take tobacco byproducts and turn them back into a [00:06:00] usable product that can make machine made cigarillos and cigars.
Tip cigars, as well as fillers, which allow the. Customers to blend one natural crop year to the next nut, natural crop year because like wine or tobacco or any plant material, it's different one year to the next in order for a customer to get their blend. Correct. We have our process is the one thing.
That can be consistent time and time again, they blend in different amounts in order to make their own blend different. So we took those ideas and with the legalization of hemp flour in the United States, we now make hemp wraps out of hemp flour and papers for cigarillos for blunt wraps. Truly a hundred natural, all natural through [00:07:00] our process.
We're just using buds, right? And so it really does bring a new product to market that allows the customers to compliment the flower that they're smoking. And I think that's the key. Lightweight rolling papers is for a certain, that's traditional. It's been around for a long time. Don't put as much fiber in there.
Make as clean as possible. Now we're talking about something that's higher weight, like a blunt wrap. That's actually complimenting smooth,
Mm-hmm.
slow burning nice ash, all those things that you see in a fine cigar, you can now find in your blunt wrap that we make to compliment your, your flour.
that is so exciting. I saw on your website the, the gummed raptors. What? Explain what that is.
so think rolling paper and the way you [00:08:00] use it has a little gum line on it. You put it in a package. Hemp wraps or blunt wraps are normally heavily flavored and they're placed in a foil pouch. so what we've done is our products don't have to be in a foil pouch. They stay pliable for a customer.
We can apply flavor ourselves in a smaller amounts, not the heavy flavor, but in smaller amounts, and we can now gum it and put a gum line on it like you do a rolling paper. So instead of having a foil pouch, you can now put it in booklet
I see.
and now you have a sustainable solution that doesn't have the. The, the foil pouches.
And although we're used to using those in the, in the US and, and in some areas Europe, they don't want those single use plastic laws and directives that say you can't have single use plastic or, or single use packages anymore. These putting [00:09:00] it into a regular rolling paper type booklet really helps.
So it's a combination of the
That makes sense. That makes sense. Now, you mentioned that you make other products better so it would be a B2B product or a B2B partnership. Who are the customers who. I would say, for lack of a better word, that you would target or people that you would like to work with what type of customer , would that be?
Yeah, so we do a little bit of both. We do the big experience converter out there who does a lot of white labeling for other people, so, We'll work with them to have them understand who we are and what our papers bring to have part of their portfolio, so when they talk to brand owners. But the reason also, I'm putting a brand out there.
Botani, which we've never done in the past. S wm has been a company that just has existed. You, you kind of find out who we're,
Yeah.
I'm now projecting who we are because I want the brand owner and these new brand owners to understand and help them through the [00:10:00] process. We know how hard it is to start a brand.
Takes a lot of money, takes a lot of capital to begin with, but that alone doesn't get you there. Money. Doesn't get you there. You gotta have no house who are reaching out to these brand owners and giving them solutions. So show them what they can do. Then I will refer them to some of these converters we already work with.
So that they can have a complete package. And that, that's what we're trying to, it's, it's, it's an education as well as a, promotion of new product. But in the end, I'm not making the final brand. Somebody else is for them, but the connections we help get them there. So,
, and it seems like the market for that is, is almost endless. There are , so many new brands every day and they all are looking for an advantage. We mentioned earlier your, your parent company, and that's a publicly traded company. Is that correct?
That's correct. It's on [00:11:00] M A T V
Okay.
on New York.
, which is great because most of our listeners are investors, so this is a great opportunity for, for investors , this industry is gonna explode. I just know it. And , you're at the right place at the right time. We're gonna have.
All the information in our show notes, including , the ticker symbol, so , if you're interested in maybe investing or if you're interesting in partnering up, I'm sure somebody from Alex's team would be happy to speak with you. Just click the link in the show notes.
Alex, we're running outta time here, but I would appreciate you being on the show today. Thanks for doing this.
Yeah. Appreciate it Dan. Thank you very much and great to have an opportunity to speak.