Charleston, S.C., April 18, 2022 – To drive the impact of a circular economy, driven by cutting-edge research, financial equity, and cooperation, BrightMa Farms will break ground on The BrightMa Innovation Center (“The BIC”) in Orangeburg, S.C., on April 29, 2022. The center is the result of a new collaboration between two industrial hemp pioneers, BrightMa Farms and Puregene AG, to pave the way to greater diversity and sustainability on a global scale and creating a space where science, technology, community, and education truly combine to impact the realization of end-product application. Rooted in history, infused with rich culture and propelled by scientific discovery, with large-scale technological backing, The BIC (the name which signifies the venture led by BrightMa and supported by Puregene) is establishing a world where literally anything is possible.

RELATED: South Carolina Grower BrightMa Farms Builds Genetics Partnership With Swiss Hemp and Cannabis Research Company Puregene AG

Puregene has been able to harness the power of the adaptive range of hemp. In fact, hemp`s ability to grow from the arctic circle to the tropics is simultaneously one of its biggest challenges and its biggest strength. To date, global breeding programs have only existed in a few small locations, and current elite varieties are not broadly adapted to multiple climate zones or latitudes. By testing genetically diverse material in diverse environments, Puregene can rapidly select and incorporate highly beneficial environmental response traits into future varieties. With genomic prediction, breeding is literally flipped on its head, as diverse material is tested directly where it will be produced by stakeholders. Ultimately, the realization of breeding advances in real time benefits both producers and stakeholders.

BrightMa Farms is working for the immediate benefit of minority farmers, and ultimately, the industry at large. The aim was to expand territories and bridge the gap for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) talent to be engaged with deliverable supply chains using industrial hemp. The unique positioning of HBCUs offers an opportunity to rapidly accelerate Black economic mobility. The support from BrightMa and the 1890 Research Extensions has increased the impact of the HBCU footprint substantially. In addition, the first-of-its-kind initiative of BrightMa and Puregene increases its scientific significance and magnifies its scope dramatically. Puregene, a Swiss company that performs genomic-based predictive breeding, are adding its extensive expertise and ground-breaking technological advancements to amplify the venture to new levels of realization, as it accelerates hemp applications by implementing its proper vertical integration strategy. Every stage of the production process is optimized, ensuring innovation is directly implemented in the market.

RELATED: How BrightMa Farms is Striving to Create Opportunities in Hemp

Puregene is able to deliver on the key vision of high performance and industrial-ready hemp varieties. It is the genetics in the hemp seed that makes it ultimately superior. Puregene dominates this front, as it’s the company responsible for deciphering the DNA of Cannabis. The Puregene partnership offers the expertise, data, and technology that will be the foundation of the center’s advanced breeding platforms. This expertise will also be embedded in training and internships for students, bringing greater diversity to the industry, with cutting-edge technology at its core.

Cannabis retailers in Michigan found out on a whim last week that certain gummies and vape products in their inventory were put on a do-not-sell list by state regulators.

The products in question are from processor Sky Labs, a Mount Morris-based company that specializes in making edibles, MLive.com reported.

Certain gummies and vaping products sold under a brand often produced by Sky Labs were placed on administrative hold April 14 by the Cannabis Regulatory Agency (CRA), formerly the Marijuana Regulatory Agency, rebranded last week under an executive order.

A CRA spokesperson told MLive the agency could not comment on or confirm the investigation—no products were place on recall—but licensed retailers continued to receive updates to the do-not-sell list throughout the day on April 15, including blue-raspberry gummies and other flavors of THC-infused edibles from Sky Labs.

Denise Pollicella, a founder and managing partner of Cannabis Attorneys of Michigan, who represents Sky Labs, told MLive the administrative hold was placed on more than $5 million worth of the company’s products with no explanation from state regulators.

“At 4 p.m. [April 14] they received a call from a client and literally all of their product started going on administrative hold,” she said. The CRA “said it’s related to an investigation. It does not appear to be a public health or safety matter, but I’m speculating, because they didn’t issue a recall.”

Pollicella also told the news outlet that the products placed on hold all appear to originate from the same licensed cannabis grower. Pollicella said she could not reveal the grow facility’s name.

Those products already passed state testing standards or else they would not have been approved for distribution to licensed retailers.

When CRA officials place a product on hold, point-of-sale systems don’t automatically flag sales on those products, MLive reported. Instead, retailers are responsible for regularly monitoring a statewide system to determine that products in their inventory remain safe and clear for sale.

Sky Labs previously had a batch of products placed on hold for 13 months, “and we still don’t know why,” Pollicella told the news outlet.

Good Feels is releasing its line of cannabis-infused seltzers in dispensaries throughout Massachusetts.

© Good Feels

The company will offer four different cannabis-infused seltzers—Black Cherry, Blood Orange, Grapefruit, and Raspberry Apple—and will also offer two beverage enhancers (flavorless and lemon-lime). Each 12-ounce seltzer contains a blend of 3 milligrams of THC and 2 milligrams of CBD while the beverage enhancers contain 4.5 milligrams of THC and 3 milligrams of CBD per serving (20 servings, 150mg total), according to the company.

Good Feels says all its products are manufactured with infinitely recyclable glass bottles in a carbon-neutral facility powered by 100% renewable energy. Furthermore, the minority-owned cannabis brand says it purchases 25% of its materials from cannabis businesses with social equity or economic empowerment license types.

“I started this company because there was no solution to my problem,” said Jason Reposa, founder and CEO of Good Feels. “I had to create my own solution. We took an aggressive approach to launch these products as quickly as possible so that people can have access to them. They really are revolutionary in that the innovation didn’t exist, so we had to create it. I needed to create something for myself, and I knew if I did, others would love it as well.”

The “problem” for which Reposa sought a solution was his own personal health challenges. Reposa says he developed temporomandibular joint disorder—otherwise known as lockjaw—in 2019 due to stress from selling his former company at the time, combined with other life events.

“I was on a liquid diet, basically. I couldn’t open my mouth an inch,” Reposa said. “Typically, it’s attributed to a lot of inflammation, and the mechanics of my jaw just weren’t working correctly. I went to the doctors, went to the dentists, [and] I got a needle in my head—they were squirting into my temple to relieve all the inflammation—and it wasn’t really working. And like many people in my situation, as a last resort, I was like, there’s got to be a different way.

“So, I found cannabis and I was like, ‘This actually really works,’ but I didn’t want to smoke it,” Reposa adds. “That was the biggest thing. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite to my kids.”

With that in mind, Reposa said he also didn’t want to turn to edibles, which, in his opinion, are traditionally “a bad experience.”

“It’s just not a good experience,” Reposa said of cannabis edibles. “I don’t want to wait an hour to feel anything, and then after that hour go have a panic attack in my bed all cuddled up with blankets and not talk to my kids and hope they don’t come and knock on my door. Also, I didn’t want to be on a six-to-eight-hour journey because I don’t have time for that. If I take an edible and it doesn’t hit me the right way based on my body’s chemistry in that moment, then I could potentially be out of commission for the next six hours, and I just didn’t like that idea.”

© Good Feels

With smoking and edibles non-starters in Reposa’s pursuit for pain relief, he turned his attention to beverages. But he didn’t find an answer for his ailment in the existing market, so his self-described “curiosity-driven” personality led him to seek his own solution.

While Reposa had a vision of the cannabis product he wanted to create, his background is in technology and, therefore, he admittedly was green to the cannabis industry.

“I’m not from the traditional market in any sense, so I approached it with a fresh set of eyes,” Reposa said. “I had to learn all the science, I had to learn all the chemistry, I had to learn the plant, the biology, all that stuff.”

That was one challenge. Another was learning the process of creating a cannabis-infused seltzer.

“I ended up reverse-engineering some of the formulations and determining the core ingredients that I would need and the specific surfactants and the emulsifiers that I would need to be able to accomplish something like this,” Reposa said. “So, I developed my own IP (intellectual property) and I was like, ‘This is actually pretty good.’ It was better than what was in the market, at least in Massachusetts, and so I was like, ‘Maybe there’s something to this.’”

Reposa ultimately developed a cannabis beverage that helped relieve the pain he felt from TMJ—and he was able to do so with his own at-home cultivation, which became legal when Massachusetts legalized cannabis in November 2016.

“I was just medicating myself with my own home grow,” Reposa said. “I did all the processing myself, I did everything seed-to-sale, you might say, for myself. I built a bottling machine. I just worked backwards until I was like, ‘Okay, this is the step that I have to start with.’”

And just as Reposa was finding relief and overcoming one challenge, he was immediately met with another when he was laid off from his job at the beginning of 2020.

“Well, maybe this is my next venture,” Reposa said he remembers thinking at the time.

However, Reposa’s idea was pushed to the backburner as the pandemic threw the world for a loop at the start of 2020. Like many, Reposa said he took time during the onset of the pandemic to assess what he direction he wanted to move next.

It was then, during the pandemic-induced shutdowns (and the occasional boredom that came with them) that Reposa picked up the idea again.

“I was in my house with everybody else and just being like, ‘Now what do I do?’” Reposa said. “I was like, I have this idea, I want to do it, but I don’t have a name.”

And then, Reposa says, the company name came from an unexpected source.

“My mother-in-law suggested the name Good Feels, and I was like, ‘Huh, that kind of encompasses it all,’” Reposa says. “It’s not Canna-Feels, it’s not Drinks Company—it was just Good Feels. That’s the embodiment of what we’re trying to get across: it tastes good, it feels good.”

From there, Good Feels was born. By August 2020, Reposa signed the lease on Good Feels’ facility in Meadway, Mass., and the company was off and running.

After originally planning to launch Good Feels in August 2021, the company first had to sort through a series of supply chain challenges, as well as Massachusetts regulations, leading to some paperwork delays.

In due time, however, Good Feels officially launched in February 2022.

With Good Feels still in its infancy, Reposa says he’s excited for what the future holds while noting the company’s focus on “controlled growth.”

“It's all [about] quality control for us,” Reposa said. “We don’t want to go to 120 dispensaries overnight, and that’s because we have to feel out our own equipment also. We couldn’t support that on day one and we don’t really want to disappoint anybody. We’re always trying to put our best face forward. All the products that you see in the dispensaries have been quality controlled at this point. We want to make sure everybody has a really good experience.”