You’ve probably noticed at this point, CBD products aren’t exactly cheap. And you might have asked yourself why this is… Is the extracted CBD itself so expensive? Is the manufacturing process so difficult that it has to be sold at a higher price? Or could there be a CBD cartel that secretly regulates international CBD supply and raises the price through the illusion of scarcity?
High-quality broad-spectrum extracts instead of cheap isolates
One thing is for sure: CBD is a premium ingredient- this is the case for our products anyhow. To ensure we have the best products for you, we only use the highest quality broad-spectrum hemp extracts. If we wouldn’t care as much as we do about quality, we could easily offer you CBD products for a much cheaper price. However, we are pretty sure you’re interested in the positive effects CBD more than buying cheap CBD that could leave you with an overall bad experience.
For example, we could use isolates that cost less than broad-spectrum extracts and can be bought from China, but they simply don’t coincide with our values and quality guarantee here at VAAY. Not all CBD is created equal. The hemp plant contains numerous other valuable ingredients in addition to CBD which we believe should be included in our products to give you a natural and well-rounded experience.
We want to make sure you won’t get high
(at least not from our products)
As much as we care about giving you the full experience, there’s one exception we naturally must make: You won’t find any THC content in our products. On the one hand, this is because THC is illegal and CBD products can legally only contain mere traces of it at most. On the other hand, we put all of our extracts through an additional process to eliminate the little bit of THC, that would even be allowed, so the THC content of all of our products remains under the detectable level of 0.01%.
It takes a lot of manual labor to process hemp
When choosing our raw ingredients, we’re very picky about what we use for our CBD products. Our suppliers are all individually chosen and fulfill our high-quality standards. We work with professionals who have perfected the process of gaining high-quality materials over generations of work. And this isn’t an easy task- the process of winning high-quality broad-spectrum hemp extracts from hemp seeds takes a lot of effort and physical labor.
This means for you: You can trust us that any product of ours fulfills our strict high-quality expectations. This is our first priority and stands far above anything else.
This means for us: A lot of extra effort. To guarantee that all of our ingredients remain high-quality, we don’t only rely on lab analyses and reports. We prefer to buy all of our raw ingredients from smaller businesses which we care to get to know personally. This creates a relationship of trust and when it comes to quality, we would trust the few businesses we’ve chosen with our lives. And to be honest, we do really enjoy driving out to discover new small manufacturers and learn about their processes. But it still takes a lot of time and effort.
European industrial hemp varieties don’t actually contain that much CBD
If a farmer wants to cultivate industrial hemp in the EU, he (or she) can’t just choose to plant any hemp variety with the highest CBD content. There is an approved catalog of hemp species that are allowed to be cultivated in the EU, which compared to many hemp varieties in the US are relatively low in CBD.
A popular CBD strain known as “Charlottes Web” has been getting a lot of attention in the media lately for its incredibly high CBD content of 17 percent; “Harle-Tsu” however, a strain bred by the Humboldt Seed Collective, supposedly trumps this with a CBD content of over 20 percent.
The average CBD content of European hemp varieties, when measuring the content in the flower, lies between 5 to 8 percent. We, however, only use CBD extracts from hemp leaves which only contain less than 1 percent CBD.
Although we use modern and high-tech CO2 extraction technology without any solvents, a decent portion of CBD is unfortunately lost in the manufacturing process- only approximately 70-85 percent of cannabidiol contained in the hemp plant can be extracted and used.
To make a long story short: To manufacture a little bottle of CBD Oil (10 percent), we end up processing nearly a kilogram (approximately 800g) of fresh hemp.
A gentle approach to CO2 extraction
Speaking of extraction: the CO2 extraction technology we use isn’t only high-tech and free of solvents; it also processes extracts in small batches over a long period of time to be as gentle on the plant as possible. This guarantees that we get the best quality of broad-spectrum CBD as well as all other beneficial ingredients. But this also means as you might have guessed: higher effort = higher price…
For our CBD sports gels, we use broad-spectrum extracts from Switzerland. We’ve found a supplier in Switzerland who can manufacture extracts that match all of our (but more importantly your) requirements. Through a special decarboxylation process, only a portion of the contained CBDA in hemp is converted into CBD. We could of course just use any standard extract and lower the price of our products instead of going through this complicated process- but we won’t.
Lastly…
Next to CBD, our products also contain many other valuable ingredients. And just as with CBD, we can either use cheap or high-quality raw ingredients for the manufacturing process; only in rare cases do we use a combination of the two. At this point, you’ll probably be able to guess our choice of materials- but to make it clear: Quality is always our first priority. There is no exception. Check out the CBD Shop and buy one of our popular CBD oils. If you want to learn more about what CBD actually is, read our "What is CBD" article.
TL;DR
We don’t just sell any CBD products. The market is already overflowing with mediocre products. This is exactly what makes us go the extra mile to guarantee you receive something truly special. And above all, we strive to show the world that cannabis should no longer be shunned, but trusted.
