For cannabis and botanical processing labs
One lane of this market is closing. Your building may already be most of the way into the other one.
A federal action filed in July is set to restrict concentrated and synthetic formulations. It does not reach traditional botanical material that stays below the threshold — which makes compliant botanical processing the durable side of the line.
Most cannabis dry-milling lines are closer to that work than their operators assume. The gaps are specific, and they are namable. This page exists to tell you which ones are yours.
Four figures, as they are today. The limits attached to them are further down this page, and they are the reason to believe the rest.
A track record, not a guarantee. Import Alert 54-15 remains in force and applies to kratom entries regardless of any prior clearance history. No one can promise you an entry will clear.
Seven questions, about two minutes. The first two redraw the map above. You get a written read on your facility at the end whether or not you ever speak to us.
Answer the first two questions and this drawing redraws to your building.
Heat treatment for microbial reduction. This is net-new for essentially every cannabis facility, because cannabis processing has no equivalent step. It is the single most common gap, and the one most likely to be missing from a conversion budget.
Inbound material affects this drawing. Raw dried leaf needs the full grind train and carries a longer quarantine; pre-milled material skips coarse grinding but places more load on the kill step. Worth settling before you size the line.
This is a summary of a filing, written for an operator deciding where to put capital. It is not a recommendation and it is not legal advice.
Notices of Intent filed
Published in the Federal Register
Order expected, effective the day it publishes
Term, if it takes effect
Two Notices of Intent went to the Federal Register on 1 July 2026, published 6 July 2026.
Each proposes temporary placement in Schedule I.
The orders are expected on or after 5 August 2026, taking effect on the date they publish, and would run two years, with a possible one-year extension.
As of this writing the orders have not yet published.
The first notice reaches 7-OH above a specified threshold: 0.05% for the plant.
For material further processed into extracts, concentrates, edibles or pressed pills, the threshold is 0.05%, or 1 mg per article.
A second notice addresses three related substances.
The threshold itself is open for public comment under a separate request for information, and could move.
The action is directed at concentrated and synthetic formulations.
Traditional botanical material whose naturally occurring 7-OH sits below the threshold is not within its scope.
That is the distinction the rest of this page is built on. It is a threshold question, decided lot by lot on assay — not a category exemption.
Nothing on this page places any material outside the reach of the action. Assay results and your own counsel decide that.
Regulatory summary only. Not legal advice. Confirm current status with your own counsel.
A category of enhanced-alkaloid product lines is being restricted. The buyers those lines served do not disappear on the effective date. Demand moves to whatever is still compliant, and compliant botanical powder is the nearest substitute.
Anything positioned above the threshold carries scheduling exposure. Material specified and assayed to sit below it does not carry that particular exposure — which is why the specification, not the relationship, is what a serious buyer will ask you about first.
Kratom is legal in 41 states at state level, and 14 states have passed Kratom Consumer Protection Acts imposing testing, labelling and 7-OH caps. That is a more developed regulatory framework than the category is usually credited with.
Count excludes nine states with outright bans. The District of Columbia also prohibits it, and California operates a de facto commercial prohibition through administrative action rather than statute. Verify your own distribution footprint with counsel.
Cannabis processing capacity outran cannabis demand, which is the compression most of this audience is living through. Botanical kratom has not been through that cycle. Capacity and first-position contracts are being allocated now, by operators who move early — but the reason to move is fit, not timing.
Regulatory summary only. Not legal advice. Confirm current status with your own counsel.
Three facility types. One answer — do you run dry milling, extraction, or both — drives reuse, cost and timeline more than anything else about your building.
Best conversion target
NET-NEW FOR YOU
Your mills, sieves, blending and pack lines carry over. The quality system is the part most operators underestimate.
Sounds ready. Is not.
NET-NEW FOR YOU
Extraction-only labs often read as the closest fit and are usually the furthest. There is no milling to reuse, so the powder line is built from nothing. Your QA bench space and skid capacity do carry over.
Best reuse story
NET-NEW FOR YOU
Build the flour line first and run powder while the extraction stack stays on its existing work.
Total conversion cost, including three months of downtime at $50k/month. Ranges are low/mid/high across comparable facilities; the headline figure is the midpoint, not a quote.
Shut down, decontaminate, retrofit, validate, restart on kratom only. This is the base case behind every figure above, and it assumes three months of downtime at $50k/month.
Keep cannabis running alongside kratom. This requires physical segregation — wall, airlock, duplicate air handling, $100k–$500k — plus either a duplicate mill or a validated cleanout, $40k–$150k. It is rarely viable without separate bays.
Indicative ranges based on comparable facility conversions. Not a quote. Actual scope depends on a site walkdown.
Five stages. Most brokers stop after the second one.
Farm relationships in West Kalimantan / Kapuas Hulu, with documentation per shipment.
Export paperwork, customs, tariffs and freight to your dock.
Conversion planning against your existing equipment, not a generic line.
Specification, COA panel and SOP support through validation.
Introductions to buyers for finished product.
The first four stages are the engagement. Buyer introductions are offered separately, if and when you want them — your customer relationships stay yours either way.
A broker sells you material and hands you a bill of lading. The difficulty is not landing a container — it is what your building has to become before that container is worth anything to you. The last three stages are where that gets decided, and they are the ones nobody else stays for.
The five stages above are what we carry. Everything below stays where it is, and none of it is negotiable on our side.
We do not take an equity position in it and we do not operate it.
It stays in your name. We hold nothing that your operation depends on.
We support your people through validation. We do not replace them.
We do not sit between you and the people who buy from you.
You keep the spread between landed material and finished product.
If any of that is not what you want, the arrangement is the wrong shape and worth saying so early.
The specification your buyers will ask you about, with the limits attached. The limits are the reason to believe the figures.
Mitragynine, not 7-OH. These are different analytes and the two numbers are not comparable — do not read this figure against the scheduling threshold.
Total recoverable yield per container, not any single party's share. Under a 50/50 tolling split each side sees roughly half that. Define the split basis in the contract before you model it.
Indonesian export operates under Permendag 20/2024 and 21/2024, which requires registered exporter, export approval and surveyor report documentation per shipment.
Premium dry-season lots test 1.4–1.8% mitragynine. That is a subset of lots, not a container-level expectation, and it is not what the contract commits to.
Regulatory summary only. Not legal advice. Confirm current status with your own counsel.
