From 2,000 to 22,000
Retail-Ready Pre-Rolls a Day

The My Friend Processing workflow combines responsibilities that many facilities divide across separate rooms or shifts. Flower is ground and sifted for consistent particle size and flow, papers are loaded into the plates, pre-rolls are filled and packed with the FlexPak systems, finished units are closed, placed into their retail tubes, labeled and staged for dispatch.

This integrated system produces more than 40 completed plates and approximately 22,000 fully tubed, labeled and retail-ready pre-rolls during a normal production day. The 22,000-unit result was already being achieved before the Auto Cone Loader was added. The loader was introduced later to address the remaining bottleneck: manually placing papers into the production plates.

My Friend Processing handles multiple strains and material types, including dry-infused products. Each material behaves differently, and Ryan is clear that the grind still matters. The team uses the first plate of a new strain to establish the correct weight and density. Once calibrated, the machines hold that setting through the remainder of the run with minimal adjustment.

The even pack and mechanical balance give the team the consistency required for white-label work, where every variance affects a client's product and margin.

My Friend Processing produces its own products, but white-label work represents approximately 70% of the business. That makes reliability a commercial requirement—not simply a production preference.

The increase from approximately 2,000 to 22,000 retail-ready units per day gave the company the capacity to accept larger projects and return them quickly. Consistent packing and integrated finishing helped protect the quality each outside brand expected. Ryan reported that most of the company's established white-label customers have worked with My Friend Processing for more than two years. The company did not merely add FlexPak to the operation. It built the operating model around it.

Once My Friend Processing optimized the filling and closing workflow, employees began waiting on manually loaded plates. The production machines were ready. The next tray of papers was not.

My Friend Processing became an early operating partner for the FlexPak Auto Cone Loader. Ryan's team now uses it every day. Manual plate loading previously took approximately six minutes. With the loader, the team reported completing the same step in approximately one and a half to two minutes—a reduction of roughly 67%–75%. The 22,000-unit benchmark came before the loader. Its value is keeping loaded plates in front of an already fast production line and freeing employees from the most repetitive remaining task.

My Friend Processing had produced blunt-style products by hand, but the labor and material costs did not support the required economics in its market. The FlexPak Edge introduced a scalable path into straight-wall, cigarette-style pre-rolls without relying on hand rolling.

At the time of the interview, Ryan's team had completed initial tests rather than full commercial production. The machine performed as expected, the team preferred the smoking experience of the straight-wall format, and multiple customers were already preparing projects. The opportunity was real, but Ryan remained disciplined: My Friend Processing would expand the format as customer demand and material pricing justified it.

Ryan describes the FlexPak equipment as sturdy, durable and intentionally straightforward to maintain. When an occasional component needs attention, My Friend Processing can often install the replacement itself. FlexPak ships parts, walks the team through the repair or turns around a returned unit quickly.

One early incident became the clearest example of that support. After My Friend Processing damaged its first machine—an issue Ryan partly attributed to misuse while the team was still learning—FlexPak's Dennis traveled from Oklahoma to Michigan on a Saturday. He brought two replacement machines and repaired the original unit during the same visit.

Ryan's view of equipment comes from his own floor and from the facilities around him. One of My Friend Processing's largest white-label clients owns an expensive automated pre-roll system that now sits unused. That same company sends its material to My Friend Processing for production on FlexPak equipment.

For Ryan, the lesson is not that all automation fails. It is that purchase price, repair complexity and real daily output have to be evaluated together. My Friend Processing chose to scale a modular process the team already understood. With a third production station planned, capacity can grow without abandoning the workflow responsible for its client retention.