PAX Now Extracting Its Own Rosin and THC Diamonds for Colorado Vape Pods

PAX is now creating its own cannabis extractions in Colorado, but the vape brand is doing more than cutting out the middleman.

Now one of the most popular vaporizer and vape pod manufacturers for cannabis oil, PAX launched in 2007, making vaporizers for dry herb. In 2016 the company debuted the PAX Era, a vaporizer with pods for cannabis extract that employs similar technology to nicotine vaping devices from Juul, PAX's former sister company.

For more than six years, PAX has partnered with a long list of hash makers to fill the vape pods, but it's now making its own extractions in Colorado, according to the company. Although it will continue selling pods with concentrate from other extractors, PAX is excited about its in-house hash formulation.

A combination of rosin, a solventless extraction made with heat and pressure, and THC diamonds, a refined crystalline form of THC, the new vape pods have "the cleanness and quality of live rosin with a little more potency," according to PAX vice president and United States general manager Jonathan Bernhardt.

Extracting THC diamonds requires solvents, but Bernhardt says the diamonds are purged of any non-natural substance before being mixed in with the rosin.

"It's like a kicker for THC, and we blend it in with the solventless live rosin. This is so much more than just the typical live rosin. This is a distinct, novel formulation, which is basically a combination of using pressure and increasingly different sized filters," he says.

Distillate, a form of THC stripped of terpenes and other plant compounds, is much cheaper to make than solventless concentrates, and is still the most popular extract for vaping products, but PAX and other commercial cannabis extractors are "very bullish" on rosin pods, Bernhardt explains.

"Rosin is a small segment with a lot of growth behind it. The big slug of what people are consuming still happens to be distillate, but we're seeing a ton of growth in live rosin," he adds. "We're seeing much more of the PAX consumer base gravitate to live rosin. It's a bit pricier than buying a five-ten thread cartridge, but they're making the choice to invest in a quality vaporizing experience. If we have this conversation three or four years from now, we're bullish [that] live rosin will bear a substantial chunk of what will be in the market."

The company began developing the product over a year ago and rolled it out in California in February. According to Bernhardt, PAX is releasing eleven different strain extractions in Colorado, including strains like Blue Dream, Guava Gelato, Pineapple Express and Tahoe Rose. The pods come in half-gram and 1-gram volumes, priced at $40 and $55.

The new pods are now available in around a dozen stores in Colorado, but Bernhardt says the company is "rapidly" expanding into more stores that already carry PAX products.