Vince Ning, co-founder of Nabis, speaks to a group assembled for the opening of the company’s cannabis warehouse in Woodlake this week. Photo by Frank Lopez

The world’s largest cannabis distribution center hosted a grand opening in the Tulare County town of Woodlake on Wednesday.

Nabis, a cannabis wholesale platform in California, invited community leaders to celebrate the opening of its 87,000 square-foot custom warehouse in Woodlake on Blair Road, right off Avenue 340.

A ribbon cutting was held, and guests were giving a tour of the new warehouse and the neighboring indoor cannabis grow facility of Valley Pure.

The new facility will create 100-150 new jobs and increase Nabi’s team size by 40%.

This expansion enables the company to increase fulfillment capacity by as much as 400%.

Construction began at the end of 2021, facing hurdles such as a turbulent California cannabis market and extreme weather conditions. Preliminary operations launched in January.

 

Vince Ning and Jun Lee, Nabis co-founders, are both serial entrepreneurs with backgrounds in engineering and software design. They founded the company in the Bay Area in 2017, then quickly expanded to Los Angeles.

They wanted to set up the company with cutting-edge technology to support cannabis wholesaling between brands and retailers — and to bring down distribution costs.

Lee said the strategic, central placement of Woodlake was one of the many reasons they chose the Central Valley as home for the new warehouse.

“We are a statewide cannabis distributor,” Lee said. “The Bay Area and Los Angeles are the central markets for California, and if you draw a straight line from Oakland to L.A., the middle point is actually Woodlake.”

He added that there is a talented workforce present in the region.

Another benefit of being in Woodlake, Ning said, is proximity to the borders of neighboring states — another plus in a possible future where cannabis is legalized nationwide for interstate trade.

Lee said they lost a main office in San Francisco due to the pandemic, and now since their largest distribution center is in Woodlake, they are calling the new location Nabis headquarters.

Ning said with their experience in software design, they were able to create a packaged solution that allows brands and retailers to transact freely and easily with Nabis’ proprietary platform.

 

“The technology does offer a way to continue helping us lower our costs as we scale, and as we help support the scale of the cannabis industry,” Ning said.

There are plans to build three additional warehouses of similar size for a total of 350,000 square feet on approximately 100 acres.

Currently, the warehouse holds about 3 million units — and can hold a maximum of 6 million units.

A unit represents a case of product ready to ship to a store.

Will Brophy, head of operations for Nabis, said the warehouse will allow them to get to the next phrase of strategic growth.

Nabis has partnered with more than 300 cannabis brands. Around 40 brands are currently being distributed out of the Woodlake facility.

Trucks with 6,000-pound loads go out from the facility daily, with about 500 orders fulfilled a day.

With the new facility, Ning said Nabis will be able to serve not just the 22% of the California market they serve today, but over 40% of the legal market in the next few years.

“This is just beginning,” Ning said.