HOLYOKE — The machines inside Analytics Labs seem like futuristic, esoteric devices to the uninformed. Workers in lab coats move around instruments with names like Agilent High-Performance Liquid Chromatography System, performing what seems like complicated science experiments.
But the work that Analytics Labs does inside its Appleton Street laboratory is actually quite simple to explain. The business plays an important role in the state’s marijuana industry.
“We are the niche to make sure the cannabis is safe for public consumption,” said Brenda Shalloo, the company’s chief scientific officer. “Our primary goal is to make sure it’s safe.”
Analytics Labs is the first such testing lab in western Massachusetts, offering a necessary service for cannabis companies in the area. The state requires such companies to submit their cannabis to independent labs that run nine separate tests for cannabis potency; the aromatic compounds known as terpenes; residual solvents; heavy metals; pesticides; moisture; pathogenic microbes; non-pathogenic microbes; and mycotoxins.
The marijuana industry is booming in Holyoke. The state’s Cannabis Control Commission has approved 50 licenses for retail, cultivation, manufacturing, “microbusinesses” and testing labs that are located in Holyoke — the most in the entire state. The next highest is Worcester with 32 approved applications, followed by Boston with 27.
Cannabis companies have been drawn to the city for its cheap electricity — one of the industry’s biggest expenses, given the massive energy footprint of cultivation facilities — and its location at the intersection of two interstates. City officials also have worked to attract the industry by making the bureaucracy of locating in Holyoke as smooth as possible.
Until Analytics Labs opened in September, however, companies in the western part of the state had to transport batches of marijuana to central or eastern Massachusetts to have the mandatory testing done on their products. Aaron Vega, Holyoke’s director of planning and economic development, said that it was also important to city officials that Analytics Labs is woman- and minority-owned, and that it is locally owned.
“The opportunity was here,” said company President Tiffany Madru, who herself was raised in Holyoke. “The whole chain is here, but what was missing?”
Shalloo, the chief scientific officer, is an industry veteran. She was originally an Environmental Protection Agency scientist before opening the first independent cannabis testing lab in Arizona. She said she has helped Arizona, Nevada and now Massachusetts mold their safety policies. Hearing her talk about her equipment and testing protocols, her passion for the work is obvious.
During a recent tour of the lab, Shalloo explained how her team makes sure a batch of cannabis isn’t contaminated by e. coli or salmonella, for example, or whether it meets the state’s strict threshold for the presence of pesticides. She consistently returned to the same theme throughout the tour.
“Let’s keep it safe,” she said. “That’s our job.”
Tests are done on 10-gram samples taken from batches weighing 15 pounds. There are strict state-mandated protocols about the way those samples pass through a chain of custody, and the state also requires labs to submit financial disclosures to ensure that they are truly independent of cannabis companies, whose names are removed from the samples labs take in.
Vega said the growing industry is part of the city’s revitalization plan.
For Madru, that was an important part of the ability to locate the business in Holyoke, too. She said she hopes the industry can help revitalize downtown, bringing with it other jobs and businesses as well.
“As someone who grew up in Holyoke, that’s big,” she said.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristenesen@gazettenet.com.