Our SOPs are now free for everyone

As of today, the Chill Division SOPs are free for anyone to read, download and use, over at sops.chilldivision.co.nz.

That's the core of what we use, both to get a cultivation facility licensed and keep it running on a daily basis, 129 pages all up:

• Security Policies & Procedures (26 sections, 35 pages): access control, surveillance, staff and visitors, disposal, record keeping, and inward / outward goods.
• Cultivation Procedures (12 chapters, 37 pages): clones through to harvest, drying, trimming, testing, IPM and nutrients.
• Automations Guide (11 chapters, 50 pages): how we actually run a room with Home Assistant and ESPHome. These are still early days but we'll continue to work on them.
• How to use these documents (4 sections, 7 pages): the basics, plus some advice on working with the Medicinal Cannabis Agency.

Between them, that's the SOPs a licence application needs, all given away for free.

Each one can be read online with search across the lot, works on your phone, and has a print-ready PDF. They're licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, which means you can use them and adapt them to your own facility, even commercially. Just keep the Chill Division attribution, and don't pass them off as your own work.

The versions on the main site are the ones the Medicinal Cannabis Agency has reviewed. When we make changes, they go up separately under Staging, as a clearly marked draft until the Agency has had a look. This way you always know which version you should be following.

We've already begun making changes on the next version, including some updated links / product recommendations, refined wording, and more. When they're ready and have been reviewed by the Agency, they'll be published on the main site for all to see / use too.

Yes, I know this eats into my own lunch

Let's address the elephant in the room. A good chunk of what Chill Division does is help people get licensed, and the SOPs have always been a big part of that. Giving them away means some people will take them, do it all themselves, and never call us. I'm aware, and I'm fine with that.

New Zealand's Medicinal Cannabis Scheme is one of the most affordable and open-access in the world. The licence itself costs under $10k. The SOPs shouldn't be the thing that stops someone from having a go, and I'd much rather see more licensed growers than fewer. More growers means more NZ-grown flower reaching NZ patients, more choice, and a healthier industry for everyone in it, us included.

This is about genuinely removing barriers for people who want to do this properly. The consulting isn't going anywhere, because that's where the hard part is anyway.

SOPs on their own are only half the story

SOPs aren't some closely guarded secret either. There are SOPs from Hawaiian cultivation facilities out there online right now, free for anyone who goes looking. But without any implementation guidance, they're not as helpful as you might initially expect, especially when American products are referenced that can't get through customs to NZ. They were written for a different regulator under different rules, and they tell you what a facility should do without telling you how to actually build one, or what the Agency is going to be looking for when they walk through yours.

That's the gap we've tried to close. Our SOPs go further than most: specific hardware, product links, sensor configs, worked examples, and the reasoning behind each requirement. The tools they lean on are open source too, like GRACe for record keeping, the visitor sign-in app, and our ESPHome configs for M5Stack sensors.

But even then, SOPs on their own won't get you licensed. The Agency assesses your arrangements as a whole, and what matters most is the implementation: your building, your floorplan, your security, and whether your day-to-day operation actually matches what's written down. A great set of SOPs attached to a building that doesn't follow them won't get you very far.

You can, and should, still use Chill Division

So here's the honest truth: Free SOPs remove a barrier, but they don't remove the work. Our SOPs were behind eight cultivation licences in 2025 alone, and we grow under them ourselves at Pause Labs. When you work with us, we'll:

1. Review a site with you before you sign the lease, including the distances to housing and schools, and whether the building can actually work.
2. Refine your floorplan, and make sure it shows everything the Agency needs to see.
3. Pressure-test your security arrangements against what the Agency expects AND against what you say you'll be doing.
4. Assist you with application prep work, to ensure you have provided as much information as is required without over-committing yourself to doing extra work.
5. Work through the RFIs with you, and get you ready for the site audit.
6. Point you in the direction of product supply avenues, so you can either export, bring product to market domestically through us, or we can put you in touch with others if you have the financial runway to do it yourself.

Clients who work with us also get access to a private set of supporting extras that sit alongside the public SOPs, including our Site Design Guidelines. They're built for the facilities we work with directly, and kept in step with the SOPs as they change. That's another 152 pages across 65 chapters, on top of the 129 we're giving away today for free:

• Site Design Guidelines (8 chapters, 43 pages): our full build-out guide, from finding the right building through to fitting out the security, grow rooms, air handling, irrigation, drying, networking, electrical and even audio.
• Licence Application Checklist (9 chapters, 15 pages): everything that needs to be ready before you submit, from the forms and the people involved through to attachments and fees.
• Site Shortlisting Tool (2 chapters, 6 pages): a map that checks a potential site's distance to housing and schools, plus the checks a map can't do.
• Landlord and Police Letters (2 chapters, 6 pages): fill-in letters for your landlord's permission and for notifying Police.
• Floorplan Pack (4 chapters, 8 pages): what your floorplan must show, an annotated example, and a symbol set to draw it with.
• Room Sizing Calculator (3 chapters, 8 pages): put your canopy area in, and get LEDs, dehumidifiers, cooling, electrical load and building size out.
• Shopping List (10 chapters, 15 pages): all the gear from the SOPs, with links and indicative prices.
• Plant and Equipment Import Procedures (10 chapters, 24 pages): bringing panels, dehumidifiers, LED fixtures and benching in by sea, including the questions to ask your vendor and an On-the-Water Checklist.
• Trades Briefing Sheets (6 chapters, 12 pages): one sheet per trade (panels, electrical, air-con, security, plumbing), ready to email or print.
• Pre-Audit Self-Inspection (11 chapters, 15 pages): a walk-through to test everything yourself before the Agency's site audit, plus the photos to take.

So yes, grab the SOPs. Read them, use them, adapt them to your own facility. That's what they're there for. And when you want the full package, with someone in your corner who's done this before from the first site visit through to your licence being issued, that's still us.

Book a free call with us to see if we can help: Contact us.