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What each class is worth: extraction economics for SA growers
Once the harvest is graded, the question is what each pile is worth. These are planning ranges from our extraction comparison. Farm-gate numbers, not retail prices and not quotes.
A class, 270 g from a 1 kg plant, at R60 to R150 a gram for premium flower: R16,000 to R40,000.
B class, 255 g. Dried, cured, run through a hydrocarbon loop at roughly 18 percent yield, that gives about 45 g of extract. At R60 to R180 a gram: R2,700 to R8,100.
C class, 150 g of popcorn. Bubble hash yield runs 10 to 15 percent, so roughly 18 g at R80 to R200 a gram: R1,400 to R3,600.
D class, 215 g of trim. A single screen separates the kief, maybe 20 g of full-melt after static sifting at R100 to R250 a gram, plus the sieve oversize gives a little golden shatter. Call it R2,000 to R8,500.
Total per plant: R22,000 to R60,000.
Read the low end. That is the honest first season: drying losses, trim mistakes, buyers that do not show up. The high end is the ceiling, and only if the product sells at those prices.
The uncomfortable part. Extract value per gram of input is lower than flower value in this model. B class makes more as flower than as cartridges in the short term. We still route it to extraction on purpose. The cart line is where the SA market is going, and building the process now means we are not starting from zero when the licensed market opens. That is a business decision, not a yield decision. Run your own numbers and make your own call.
A few yields worth knowing before you plan around them. Hydrocarbon extraction returns 15 to 25 percent of input weight. Bubble hash runs 10 to 15 percent from popcorn. Dry sift from trim runs 5 to 15 percent depending on how frosty the trim is. QWET shatter from leftover plant matter runs low, 2 to 5 percent, but the input is waste, so anything is profit.
Terpene retention matters more than yield at the premium end. Static sifted heads keep 90 to 98 percent. Hydrocarbon keeps 90 to 98 percent for the carts. Ethanol loses 30 to 50 percent in evaporation, which is why it belongs on the last pass, the waste material, not the good stuff.
The comparison and the full model are on the pipeline page: https://420forums.co.za/processing-pipeline-farmer-economics/
Next: the honest viability math for a SA farmer.