SYDNEY: ECS Botanics Holdings Ltd announced that Mr Damian Wood has joined the company as Director of Medicinal Cannabis Production.
Mr Wood joins ECS after spending 2.5 years at Little Green Pharma as Head of Quality, then Head of Production. He plans to relocate from Western Australia to ECS’ production base in Tasmania.
Mr Wood has twenty years’ experience in GMP pharmaceutical manufacturing and GMP auditing in the UK, Australia, and Canada. He has a proven capability of executing successful cannabis production and manufacturing strategies, including advising on cultivation, product development, post-harvest production and manufacturing methods, new site construction and obtaining TGA GMP licences for medicinal cannabis manufacture.
He has experience in bringing Australia’s first licensed medicinal cannabis oil to market and the first Australian medicinal cannabis oil product export to the UK.Mr Wood has participated in novel drug delivery system research and development in partnership with Curtin University WA, University of NSW, and Otago University NZ.
He has strong leadership, education and team building qualities, all of which are critically important in building out the ECS medicinal cannabis project from cultivation to advanced GMP manufacturing.
Mr Wood has an MBA (Innovation and Leadership), Master of Pharmacy and Post-Graduate Diploma in Clinical Pharmacy.
ECS Botanics Managing Director Alex Keach commented: “We are pleased to have an industry leader joining our team. Damian has end-to-end experience in medicinal cannabis, and now with ECS he will be applying this knowledge on an industrial scale approach. He has immense talent, with a technical and business focus, which is the perfect combination for bringing the ECS strategy to market in an innovative, bankable and timely manner. It’s the perfect time in the company’s short history for Damian to join the team, with the ECS project construction well underway and fast tracking to large scale production.”
ECS Director of Medicinal Cannabis Production Damian Wood commented: “I am excited to join team at ECS Botanics and execute on the project strategy. I strongly believe the project will deliver large scale low-cost extraction, production and GMP manufacturing capabilities. The future of medicinal cannabis is to minimise production costs and maintain quality outputs to ensure patient safety, product efficacy and generate investor value in a customer-focussed business.”
ECS Botanics is an industrial hemp and medicinal cannabis business, cultivating (own and contract growers) and processing hemp for the wholesale market and its own retail food brand. The company’s main operations are conducted in Tasmania, Australia.