Zalympix Michigan 2023: Who Grew What
By Gas & Middies
SPOILER ALERT!: If you are participating in the Zalympix Michigan 2023 judging and have not submitted your votes, please don’t read forward. You will learn information about each entry that will remove some of the “blindness” from the judging. You have been warned!
New to Zalympix Michigan this year, all entries from competitors were submitted blind for judging. All entries came in Zalympix branded glass jars with only their entry number as a differentiating marker.
This is a great addition, hoping to remove some of the brand bias people may have when judging each entry.
However, this comes with one major caveat.
As this is a heavily regulated industry, all entries came with two license numbers. One for the producer and one for the packager.
You can search for all licenses at the following LARA website.
So any tech savvy judge in this competition could look up each producer license to try to map each owner to each competitor entered in the competition.
Here is that journey:
Competitors
Zalympix Michigan 2023 had 20 competitors, as follows:
- Flower Power
- Michigander Fire
- Peninsula Gardens
- Ghostbudster Farms
- Mitten Canna Co
- Old School Organics
- Lightsky Farms
- Pressure Pack
- Growing Pains
- Voyage Bloom
- Pro Gro
- GANS
- Rkive
- Red Eye
- Archive
- Hytek
- MI Gas
- Lost Leaf
- Local Grove
- Freshy Fine
Interesting Findings
Pro Gro
Pro Gro had two entries.
The mystery was finding out who else Pro Gro grew for besides themselves.
With a little digging, it turns out Pro Gro has a close relationship with a fellow competitor: Archive.
Archive is a seed bank that Pro Gro gets some of their most famous strains from, including: “Secret Formula, Rocket Fuel, Borello, Rainbow Belts, and Cannabis Cup winner Moonbow #112”.
From this, I’m speculating that Archive chose Pro Gro to grow their seed selection for the competition as they don’t grow themselves.
Myster solved (maybe?).
3300 Miller Road LLC
3300 Miller Road LLC also had two entries.
If you noticed as well, this was ALSO the packager for all entries.
I couldn’t find a lot of information on 3300 Miller Road LLC, besides it was owned by a Thomas M. Farrell. Looking him up, he owns Refine Michigan Co. also known as The Refinery.
The Refinery is one of the main sponsors for Zalympix Michigan 2023 so this makes sense to an extent.
The Refinery owns a few brands in this competition:
Hytek is one of them, but is accounted for and has it’s own producer license.
Growing Pains is another brand under The Refinery umbrella.
So that leaves one mystery brand unaccounted for:
- Hytek
- Growing Pains
- ?
As MI Gas is the only brand I could find no information about, it might be safe to assume this is the third brand entered by The Refinery.
Mitten Canna Co.
Mitten Canna Co. is a competitor in this competition and has a producer license AU-G-C-000139, however you won’t find that license on any of the entry jars.
The questions being, why didn’t they grow under their license & who grew for them instead?
Unknown Entries
Given the interesting findings above, I wasn’t able match all 20 entries to all 20 competitors with 100% accuracy. There are 3 entries I am most unsure about:
- Mitten Canna Co.
- Growing Pains
- MI Gas
- Mitten Canna Co. because they didn’t grow under their own license and I’m not 100% confident who grew for them.
- Growing Pains because I’m not 100% sure which of the two 3300 Miller Road LLC entries is Growing Pains.
- MI Gas because I have heard literally nothing about this company.
Who’s Who
Here is the list I’ve compiled of all entries and which competitor I suspect grew it.
Anything I was unsure about I marked with a ?.
My best deduction is marked with (maybe ).
Entry 01
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000435
- License Holder: Peninsula Agriculture, LLC
- Competitor: Peninsula Gardens
Entry 02
- Producer License: AU-P-000220
- License Holder: RKIVE
- Competitor: Rkive
Entry 03
- Producer License: AU-G-B-000108
- License Holder: LocalGrove
- Competitor: Local Grove
Entry 04
- Producer License: AU-P-000205
- License Holder: IVP Holding LLC
- Competitor: Pressure Pack
Entry 05
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000422
- License Holder: Old School Organics, LLC
- Competitor: Old School Organics
Entry 06
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000665
- License Holder: Voyage Bloom Enterprises, LLC
- Competitor: Voyage Bloom
Entry 07
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000628
- License Holder: Green Mitten Harvest LLC
- Competitor: Michigander Fire
Entry 08
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000689
- License Holder: Agro Tek of Michigan Inc
- Competitor: Ghostbudster Farms
Entry 09
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000332
- License Holder: Total Health Cultivation, LLC
- Competitor: Lightsky Farms
Entry 10
Entry 11
Entry 12
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000944
- License Holder: Hytek Cultivation
- Competitor: Hytek
Entry 13
- Producer License: AU-G-B-000133
- License Holder: Lost Leaf LLC
- Competitor: Lost Leaf
Entry 14
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000640
- License Holder: BVH LLC
- Competitor: Freshy Fine
Entry 15
- Producer License: AU-G-B-000175
- License Holder: Flower Power Cannabis
- Competitor: Flower Power
Entry 16
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000697
- License Holder: Noman Investments, LLC
- Competitor: Red Eye
Entry 17
- Producer License: AU-G-C-000360
- License Holder: West Michigan Farmers LLC
- Competitor: Growing Pains
Entry 18
- Producer License: AU-G-C-001004
- License Holder: Vida Farms, LLC
- Competitor: Gans
Entry 19
- Producer License: AU-P-000278
- License Holder: 3300 Miller Road LLC
- Competitor: MI Gas
Entry 20
- Producer License: AU-P-000278
- License Holder: 3300 Miller Road LLC
- Competitor: Mitten Canna Co.
Outro
This was a fun little foray into investigative journalism 😂.
If anyone has any better sources to some of the mystery entries or if some of my information is just plain wrong:
Feel free to let me know and I will update this article.
Stay 😶🌫️