“Scour Merritt real estate” is on the top of Zachary Chester’s to-do list these days.
Chester is the CEO behind Bowen Island Growers, a craft cannabis business he started with partner Davis Allen, the company’s chief science officer. The pair hopes to set up a micro cannabis operation in the Nicola Valley in the near future, and shared their ideas with council at a regular meeting on May 14.
While the company has yet to purchase any property, Chester said they are eyeing industrial land by the Merritt airport and on Midday Valley Road.
The entrepreneurs are looking at properties big enough to house multiple warehouses approximately 3,500 to 4,000 square feet in size.
“So we would probably start with a 1,500 square-foot warehouse and just start scaling them from there,” said Allen.
Bowen Island Growers is the fourth cannabis cultivation company to declare their interest in building a facility in the Nicola Valley, but their focus on micro cultivation sets them apart from other companies, said the pair.
“There is a lack of high quality cannabis in the legal market,” Allen told council, “And many growers have the same generic strain selection with a main focus on high THC content.”
Creating new, unique strains for medical and wellness purposes is at the heart of the company’s vision, he said.
In addition to producing cannabis for ingestion, the duo plans to create wellness products such as transdermal patches to treat PTSD and menstrual cramps.
“We have a deal in place with a company where we will have to extract certain molecules out of the cannabis strain into a liquid form for those transdermal patches,” Allen explained.
Bowen Island Growers was born out of pain management in 2013 when Allen found success treating his stomach disorder through medical marijuana.
He took the DIY approach of growing due to the lack of information readily available on cannabis at the time, he said, and began to build a genetic library of different cannabis strains.
“Davis had a license where he has basically been able to grow for himself and other licensed health Canada patients for the past several years,” Chester said. “Within that community he has been able to source genetics from all over the world that other companies don’t have.”
Today, Allen has approximately 50 heirloom cannabis strains from across the globe.
“From exotic areas that have stuff that just doesn’t exist here,” he said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Coun. Melvina White shared her concerns regarding the potential smell — something she has brought up in response to previous presentations from cannabis companies hoping to set up shop in Merritt.
“Everyone says they have all these rules, but nobody can tell us what the rules are,” she said.
“You are not allowed to have any type of excess odour outside of the building,” responded Allen, adding the company’s plan is to use a carbon filtration system, which he says has worked well for his personal production.
“As the odour passes our filtration systems it will stop the odour from leaving the premises so it can minimize any type of smell,” Allen said.
“Health Canada won’t grant us a license until they fully inspect our facility,” Chester added.
“Why Merritt?” asked Coun. Kurt Christopherson.
“You guys are more open to having companies like this,” Allen responded. “To rezone in the Lower Mainland takes much longer so we would have to wait a year to go through that process, and for us to have a more scalable operation size the real estate is more affordable here.”
When the Herald asked mayor Linda Brown why she thinks cannabis companies are flocking to the Nicola Valley last month, she had similar thoughts.
“I think for one thing we are a community that has available industrial land, and I think that is one thing that is drawing them in,” she said. “I also think that we are well located, and the climate is great for agricultural products — and this happens to be one of those products.”