We've been supplying coco substrates, on and off...and on, since 2015. Compared to stonewool, timber and peat-based substrates, coir is an eco-friendly, sustainable high-performance medium when properly processed. When we entered the commercial supply market in 2017, we learned an early hard lesson that all coco is not the same. After many good successes, a few farming clients experienced a sudden/immediate crop failure due to high salinity in a shipment. Of course we did our best to help them recover from the loss and share the pain.

 

Our offshore supplier had always reassured us that the media was "triple washed" but when this happened, their excuse was that "it hadn't rained." Our confidence was shattered and we investigated the situation thoroughly. Sadly, we can confirm that there are no giant coconut washing machines over there. In the interim, we decided to halt sourcing and supplying coco to our agricultural clients.

 

We watched many other suppliers fill the void and many failures with high EC and aspergillus vectoring. One client lost 80,000 SF of up-potted teens over a weekend. The ensuing weeks were a mad scramble to source a myriad of genetics they hadn't grown or re-sold previously, and the farm eventually went into receivership. Another client weathered successive harvests losses to aspergillus failure on COAs. These were complete losses which vectored in from their imported coco substrate, proven by their independent lab testing. Shortages during the COVID years forced many farms to take anything available, shifting sizes and dry-back speeds in the same facility. Yes, sourcing critical input materials from 12 and a half time zones away creates problems. I could go on...

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It wasn't until the CEO of Kaya Coir came to visit us one day that we considered re-entering the coco substrate market. Kaya uses a municipal-level RO system to produce enough fresh, clean water to produce low-EC media. 100% coir, no pith, no chips. Lot codes. QA tests. ISO-9001 comparable processes. In their early years, they had full supply chain control from plantation to US Soil. After years with this medium, can relay that it has been clean and dependable. And Kaya has become, arguably, the largest supplier for high value crops in the USA. 

 

However, there were still some issues inherent in the nature of compressed coco. Notably, the act of compressing 6:1 (or more) fundamentally changes the structure of the coir. After planting, it settles back and creates anaerobic pockets. Roots cannot penetrate the pockets and do not reach the bottoms of the pots. Bottoms stay wet. Pythium and fusarium take control. Oh, and it blows a bunch of time and water to decompress it; every grower's favorite job when flipping a room.

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So we went to Conibo Organics, the sole/trusted supplier of Philippine coco coir to our (shared) soil blending plant near Sacramento. Conibo's coco coir has been consistently great, even though we still routinely pathogen and EC test incoming shipments. We experimented with different compression techniques in the Philippines. 4:1 and 3:1 still had issues. So we challenged Conibo to provide an uncompressed product at a similar price to compressed. Proud to relay that MaxYield Coco pre-fill pots went into production in early 2026 and our customers are absolutely raving the results! You can read more about these HERE

 

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We still distribute for Kaya compressed products, and no other brands (keep a pulse on things, still lots of junk out there). Kaya's best-in-class for a compressed coco cube. At the time of this writing, the most popular SKU is their 6" cube for $1.70 at whole pallet pricing. Also at the time of this writing, we can provide MaxYield (Philippine) Coco 1.25 gallon coco cubes with 3 layers of substrate grades (fine, medium and coarse/uncut) plus bio char enrichment for $1.78. And for that 8 cents extra, you don't have to hydrate them, can cycle a room with much less time and labor, have less pathogen risk, and get a much bigger yield. We wouldn't have put these thru R&D and into production if we didn't feel we could provide growers with a dramatically better product than what exists already in the market. If you're running Indoor CEA production, you should check these out. Game changers.