Alain Vo, CEO of LeafyPack – Interview Series

Given the size of each state’s cannabis market and the demand for products of all types and styles, the packaging and processing machines that are utilized in these manufacturing tasks need to be consistently updated and innovated. One entrepreneur with an interesting background in filmmaking and LED lighting, who’s now designing such technologies, is Alain Vo, CEO of LeafyPack.

What subject did you primarily study at Cal State Fullerton and then at UCLA? What would you say sparked your interest in studying those topics?

I was the kid who always had a camcorder in his backpack, shooting skateboard videos and mini-docs for the school announcements. Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) had a hands-on program with professors who’d worked on real sets, so it felt like the perfect lab to turn that hobby into a craft. After a couple of years grinding on short films and live-TV projects, I wanted a deeper dive into the business and theory behind entertainment, so I transferred to UCLA and majored in Film & Television with an emphasis on Producing. UCLA opened my eyes to the bigger ecosystem, financing, distribution, talent negotiations, the stuff that decides whether a great idea ever reaches an audience.

What sparked the interest? Honestly, two things. Storytelling bug, I grew up glued to behind-the-scenes DVD extras (remember those?). Seeing how a raw idea became a finished film made me want to pull those strings myself. DIY mentality, Skate videos taught me you can bootstrap production with whatever gear you’ve got. That scrappy mindset carried right into Trevi Productions, Maker Studios, and now LeafyPack—where we’re basically telling a new kind of story with automation tech. Different campuses, same through-line: I’ve always loved building the bridge between a vision in someone’s head and a tangible result the world can experience.

From your experience in writing and directing movies and serving as a producer for various studios, what were the most valuable lessons in video production and project management that you learned from those roles?

One of the most valuable lessons I took from my time directing and producing with various studios was the importance of balancing creativity with structure. Video production is inherently a creative process, but without disciplined project management, even the best ideas can stall. I learned to build frameworks that gave creative teams the freedom to innovate, while still ensuring we hit deadlines, budgets, and client expectations. Another key takeaway was the power of collaboration and communication. Producing content requires aligning directors, editors, talent, and clients, all with their own perspectives and pressures. I learned to act as a bridge, translating creative vision into actionable plans, and ensuring everyone stayed aligned on the end goal. Clear communication and transparent workflows became my biggest tools. Lastly, I discovered the value of adaptability. In production, things rarely go exactly as planned, budgets shift, timelines compress, and creative direction evolves. The ability to pivot quickly, problem-solve under pressure, and maintain morale kept projects moving forward. That adaptability has carried into my leadership at LeafyPack, where industries, technologies, and regulations are always evolving.

When did your professional interests go from filmmaking to LED lighting and its many uses across industries, and what led to that change?

Let me put a date on it: around 2013–2014 is when the lightbulb, literally, went off. I was producing a string of low-budget web series, and we were always wrestling with hot HMIs that ate power and blew the talent’s makeup in five minutes. One gaffer rolled in a brand-new LED panel kit, and it was like stepping out of the Stone Age: cool to the touch, color-tunable, ran off V-mount batteries. We wrapped an eight-hour day in six because the relights were so fast. That “time is money” moment was my first clue that LEDs weren’t just another gear upgrade, they were a workflow revolution.

Once the rabbit hole opened, I saw LEDs popping up everywhere, concert rigs, architectural facades, even early indoor-farm prototypes. The common thread was efficiency and control: you could dial in color, dimming curves, and power draw with software rather than sandbags and gels. That level of precision scratched the same itch that filmmaking did for me, taking a creative vision and engineering it into reality,so I started consulting on LED installs for studios and live-event venues, then for horticulture projects (yep, the early cannabis boom).

By 2016, my phone buzzed more for lighting advice than for production gigs, and I leaned in. LEDs taught me to think bigger than a single set or episode: solutions that save watts or labor in one industry usually translate to another. That systems mindset carried straight into LeafyPack, where we’re now automating entire packaging lines instead of swapping out Fresnels. Same obsession with efficiency, just a broader stage.

Besides cannabis and efficient and successful cultivation, what are some other industries and businesses that utilize LED lighting technology? And what are their uses in those industries?

LEDs are everywhere. Car makers now spec LEDs for everything from adaptive headlights to full-width tail-lamps and immersive cabin ambience. They’re brighter, sip less power (great for EV range), last longer than halogens, and let designers create razor-thin light signatures that double as brand DNA. Hospitals and labs use them with their Infection-control teams. Swapping chemical wipe-downs for portable UV-C LED rigs that blast pathogens on room surfaces and inside pharmacy hoods in minutes. In the packaging space, press operators love LEDs because the lamps fire up instantly, run cool, and slash energy use by as much as 70 percent. Beyond cannabis, LEDs drive urban farms growing basil, lettuce, strawberries—you name it—under tightly tuned spectra that boost flavor and shelf life while cutting HVAC loads. A 480-sq-ft pilot in upstate New York even turned a vacant dojo into a year-round greens factory. These are only a handful of cases but show that LEDs have penetrated almost every industry we interact with on a daily basis.

What inspired you to join the LeafyPack team? After studying filmmaking and working for an LED lighting supplier, what encouraged you to want to work for a cannabis machinery producer?

My film-school brain was trained to spot bottlenecks, anything that cost time, money, or creative momentum. When I pivoted into LED lighting, I saw how a smarter fixture could shave hours off a shoot or megawatts off a grow room. LEDs weren’t just bulbs; they were workflow hacks disguised as hardware. One of my lighting clients ran a midsize cannabis operation. They’d invested millions in state-of-the-art LEDs and climate control, but when I toured the place, I watched a dozen employees hand-packing flower into pouches on folding tables. Perfect environmental controls upstream, absolute chaos downstream. My producer’s brain screamed, “Third act problem!” Filmmaking taught me to reverse-engineer a narrative: identify the climax (fully automated, compliant packaging), map the beats (weighing, filling, sealing, labeling), and make sure every department hits its cue. The machinery on the market back then was either repurposed food equipment or prohibitively expensive. There was room for a company that spoke both tech and operator language, and could package a delicate product without treating it like potato chips. Founding LeafyPack meant I could take everything I’d learned, creative problem-solving, LED efficiency, lean project management, and apply it to a sector that desperately needed all three. Cannabis was (and still is) evolving at lightspeed; operators craved turnkey solutions that scaled as fast as their licenses allowed. We set out to build those solutions.

So yes, it might look like a leap from movie sets to machinery, but to me it’s the same storyline: remove friction, respect the craft, and let technology amplify the talent. Only now, instead of wrapping a shoot at golden hour, we’re helping clients hit their DOE, GMP, and bottom-line targets, roll credits on time, every time.

What are some of LeafyPack’s best-selling machines, and how do those machines assist in the packaging process? What parts of the packaging process for all product types (from flower to edibles) do those machines expedite?

Sure thing, let me give you the quick, plain-English rundown. Our big crowd-pleasers fall into three camps:

The Apollo line is our rock star. It drops cones, weighs, tamps, and twists them shut so fast you’d swear it was CGI. One operator can crank out a day’s worth of joints in about an hour, which frees the team to do pretty much anything else. For flower, gummies, whatever, you’ll see either our EcoBagger Mini (small, agile, craft-brand friendly) or its big sibling, the RotoBagger (built for “never-sleep” facilities). They pop bags open, fill them to the gram, seal, and print the date code in one smooth spin. No more scoop-and-scale on a folding table. If you make candy bars, single gummies, cookies, you name it, our Pack-Series flow wrappers wrap them tight and fast. Need stick-packs or pillow bags? That’s where the VFFS machines shine, form the bag, drop the product, seal it, done. Put those pieces together and you’ve wiped out the slow, hand-fill steps across flower, edibles, powders, you name it. Less labor, quicker turns, happier ops team. That’s why they keep flying out the door.

Since cannabis packaging regulations can and do get very strict across the legal states, how does LeafyPack ensure that their machines are operating in ways that abide by present state regulations?

Think of us as part packaging-gear manufacturer, part compliance bodyguard. Here’s how we keep every LeafyPack line on the right side of the rulebook, no matter which state you’re in. Before we cut steel, our engineering team maps each state’s packaging regs, child-resistant requirements, weight tolerances, label real estate, opacity rules, you name it, straight into the machine spec. If Colorado says flower pouches must be fully opaque and nitrogen-flushed, that feature is baked into the pouch carousel from day one. Every system ships with recipe-based controls. Operators select “XYZ Flower 3.5 g,” for example, and the PLC automatically locks in target weight, seal temperature, label panel size, THC warning icons, even font point-size minima. Change the recipe and the HMI flags anything that violates the rule set for that SKU’s destination state. Inline check weighers, barcode, QR code readers, and camera vision systems confirm every package hits weight, label, and tamper-evident marks before it leaves the discharge belt.

Anything out of spec gets kicked to the reject bin for re-work, with a timestamped record. Our printer/applicators generate GS1 or Metrc-compatible barcodes on the fly and can push real-time package counts to seed-to-sale software. Auditors love it because the digital breadcrumb trail is automatic. Regs shift, sometimes overnight. We push firmware and label-template updates remotely, so you’re not stuck waiting for a tech visit when a new icon or phrasing becomes mandatory. Every install comes with a compliance checklist and SOPs tailored to the client’s state. We train operators how to verify and document that each critical control point (weight, seal integrity, label accuracy) is met, so they’re inspection-ready. The bottom line is that we design the machine to be your first line of defense, automate the rule-checking, and give you the paper trail to prove it. That way your team can focus on scaling the production, not decoding statutes at midnight.

Because it’s a hot-button issue across all industries right now, how would you address the concerns about automation destroying or severely limiting the number of manufacturing jobs in the cannabis industry?

I hear the worry all the time, “Robots are coming for my job.” From the driver’s seat at LeafyPack, here’s what I’ve actually seen play out on real production floors. Hand-packing eighths or twisting pre-rolls all day is brutal on wrists and minds. When a customer drops in an Apollo or an EcoBagger, the same employees shift to higher-value roles, quality control, machine operation, inventory management, even customer-facing bud-tending when the shop is busy. The boring, injury-prone work disappears; the paychecks don’t. We help the business stay in business. Without it, then there are no jobs.

Cannabis margins are also razor-thin after taxes and compliance costs. If labor eats too much of the pie, the facility closes and everybody loses their job. By carving out the repetitive bits, automation lets operators stay profitable, expand SKUs, and, yes, hire more people in sales, cultivation, and R&D. We also create new opportunities for the business and career paths. Every LeafyPack install needs programmers, maintenance techs, electricians, line leads, these roles that didn’t exist back when it was just scales and scoopers. Safety is also on the forefront of what we do. Regulators don’t grade on a curve. Automated check-weighers and vision systems catch mistakes long before a recall happens. Fewer compliance hits keep the company stable, and stability is the best job-security blanket there is. So what right? Is the cannabis workforce changing? Absolutely. But in every facility we touch, headcount stays flat or rises, injuries drop, and the jobs themselves become more skilled and better paid. Our goal isn’t to replace people, it’s to give them tools that make the whole operation stronger and their careers longer-lasting.

How do you see these machines and technologies improving and evolving in the future? How much more efficient would these machines make cannabis packaging processes?

Here’s the big-picture and what I can say. Cannabis packaging is about to feel like switching from a stick shift to a self-driving car. The next generation of LeafyPack gear will tune itself on the fly, watching humidity, bud density, even cone moisture, while advanced vision systems catch stems or half-filled vapes before you ever break seal. Predictive maintenance will text you when a servo starts getting wobbly, drag-and-drop robots will jump from stacking cartons to capping tinctures overnight, and eco-friendly films will run just as fast as today’s plastics without the landfill guilt.
What does that translate to on the floor? Pre-roll output climbing from about 1,200 to 2,000 joints an hour, labor time per package cut by more than half, rejects dropping below one percent, and utility bills that finally quit spiking every month. Give it a couple of years and most operators will squeeze at least 50 percent more sellable product out of the same square footage and headcount; push a little further and we’re talking lights-off packaging cells that one tech can babysit while the rest of the team tackles R&D, or just grabs a well-earned coffee. That’s the future we’re engineering toward at LeafyPack, and honestly, it can’t arrive soon enough.

Thank you for joining us, Alain! For more information on LeafyPack, please visit its website.