History of pre-rolled cones
How a European coffee-shop convenience product became a multi-billion-unit global supply chain.
Before the product category
Hand-rolled cone-shaped joints existed long before factory cones. What changed in the 1990s was commercialization: a ready-made paper cone with a tip, sold empty so anyone could fill a consistent joint without mastering rolling skill.
1994 — MountainHigh invents the mass-market cone
Dutch company Vandenberg Special Products B.V. founded MountainHigh® in 1994 and is widely credited as the inventor of mass-produced pre-rolled paper Cones®. The brand name “Cones” itself became synonymous with the category in European retail — the early brand many older consumers still remember simply as “Cones.”
2000s–2010s — Brand boom & RAW culture
As rolling-paper brands expanded, pre-rolled cones became a standard SKU alongside papers and tips. RAW (HBI International) and other lifestyle brands helped normalize cones for a new generation of consumers, while coffee shops, head shops, and later cannabis dispensaries treated empty cones as everyday inventory.
Late 2010s — India scale & the “cone shortage”
Industry interviews with Hara Supply’s founders describe a late-2010s shortage and multi-month lead times that pushed new capital into Indian manufacturing. Hara built cleanroom-oriented facilities around Delhi and scaled to a reported ~100 million cones per month — reshaping wholesale expectations for price, lead time, and OEM private label.
Automation vs handmade
Even at global scale, a large share of cones remain handmade on mandrels. Parallel efforts — including Abellio’s automated Ireland facility for HBI medicinal channels and automation claims from producers like The Cones Factory — target dimensional consistency for filling machines. The industry still runs on both models.
Today
Buyers can source factory-direct OEM runs from India, China, and Southeast Asia; buy brand-name retail packs; or purchase wholesale towers for in-house filling. BulkCone exists to explain that map — and to route purchasing to Empti’s stocked bulk cone towers.