Alumni Spotlight: Sana Packaging

Sana Packaging is a startup that designs and develops 100% plant-based hemp plastic packaging solutions for the cannabis industry. The founders, Ron Basak-Smith and James Eichner, are both Leeds MBA alumni. In fact, they started working on Sana Packaging in Jeff York’s Sustainable Venturing class and George Deriso’s Business Plan Development class during their 2016 fall semester. A few months later, Sana Packaging was accepted to CanopyBoulder, a seed-stage business accelerator focused on ancillary products and services in the cannabis industry. Ron and James completed the accelerator program the same week they graduated from Leeds.

Over the next year, Sana Packaging raised their seed round and developed their first two 100% plant-based hemp plastic packaging products, the Sana Container and the Sana Tube. The Sana Container is a versatile child-resistant box with optimal space for branding and compliance labeling and a nesting design that allows for efficient shipping and storage. The Sana Container is ideal for flower, concentrates, vaporizer cartridges, and edibles. The Sana Tube is a versatile child-resistant tube that is ideal for pre-rolls, vaporizer cartridges, and vaporizer pens.

The cannabis industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the country and already generates over a billion units of petroleum plastic packaging waste per year. Sana Packaging is officially launching this summer and Ron and James are excited to provide the industry with some much-needed sustainable packaging solutions.

Fun Fact: James was also a principal in our MBA-student run consulting firm, Entrepreneurial Solutions.