Dycar to hire over 200 full-time workers at new cannabis facility in Cranbrook

Judging from the support they’ve received, the people at Dycar believe filling positions won’t be a challenge

Dycar Pharmaceuticals Ltd., a privately held B.C. company, recently acquired an 86,000-square-foot facility in Cranbrook. The building will be expanded to 114,000 square feet and completely retrofitted to produce up to 8,500 kilograms of medical cannabis annually.

When fully operational, Dycar will employ over 200 full-time personnel. According to Carmen Wannop, co-founder and vice-president of marketing and sales, filling positions won’t be a challenge.

“In May 2015, we had a public presentation in Cranbrook and right then, I started getting resumes,” said Wannop. “Then we sent out the news release that we had acquired the building and my email has been going off continuously.”

Scientists from Germany, Israel and the U.S. have also inquired.

Quality and safety assurance

The facility will feature 3,230-square-feet of lab space for extraction, analysis and research and development. The analysis lab will ensure Dycar’s product meets appropriated standards and it may also serve as an added income generator.

“Right now, there are 88 LPs out there at different stages . . .,” said Wannop. “That does not include us. If there are only a couple of labs, there is going to end up being a backlog. That’s why we are putting in our own analytical lab.”

She added, “We can also bring (product) from other LPs and charge them for the same testing, so that’s extra revenue into the community.”

The facility will operate in a controlled environment with high-tech security.

“Walking into our facility will be like walking into any pharmaceutical laboratory company,” said Wannop. “The public cannot come in. If you have a meeting with us, you will be escorted to our offices.”

Employees will also be heavily screened before hiring. Of course, jobs on the cultivation floor will have preference to those with a horticulture or botany background; however, anyone can work at Dycar.

“Somebody can come in who just has a love for plants or a love for cannabis and wants to help because we will have the staff that can train you,” she said. “And our facility, the way we’ve outlined it, we can hire the handicapped.”

Ideal location

Searching for a location, the founders of Dycar looked at several cities, including Kelowna, Vernon and Salmon Arm, but found their ideal fit in Cranbrook.

“In all those other places, it would have been a smaller facility, or we would’ve had to build,” said Wannop. “This already had four walls, so that was a plus, but just the support we had from the Mayor and council from Day 1 was the turning point for us.”

Dycar plans to move its office into the new facility by the end of March 2018, and the company anticipates having its Health Canada license to grow in June 2018.