WOODLAKE, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – The marijuana distribution company Nabis, based in Oakland and Los Angeles has opened what they’re calling the world’s largest legal marijuana distribution center.

It officially opened Tuesday morning and is operating in the city of Woodlake in Tulare County. The distribution center plans to hire over 100 employees from the Central Valley, and they say they’re already halfway there.

The owners of Nabis chose Tulare County as the center of their operations because it’s in the center of the state.

The 87,000-square-foot warehouse will be the hub of their distribution efforts. Thousands of packages of cannabis are already flowing through the distribution center.

The company helps distribute over 300 legal marijuana brands. A large portion of which, will now go through the new distribution center. The company says its the largest one of its kind for marijuana in the world.

“We actually searched far and wide across the state of California. What we really were in search of was something really centrally located across this gigantic state,” said CEO & Co-Founder of Nabis, Vince Ning.

Ning and Jun Lee are the co-founders of Nabis. They started in a warehouse of 500 square feet six and a half years ago.

Now, they hope to employ dozens of locals from around the Central Valley.

“We intend to employ over 100 employees from Woodlake, so I think that will bring in the tax dollars. We also pay distribution taxes to the city of Woodlake, which will be a constant flow of funds,” said CEO & Co-founder of Nabis, Jun Lee.

Right now, that distribution tax is 15%. Employees starting pay for packaging is $17 an hour.

“We also have 12 armed guards on the payroll at all times. We do take security and the safety of our products very seriously,” said Lee.

So seriously, in fact, they’ve asked us to keep the address of the warehouse to ourselves.

“The outside environment, we mimic nature,” said Dale Stewart with Valley Pure.

Not too far from Nabis, is Valley Pure’s cannabis facility where marijuana is cloned, grown, dried, and packaged. Some of those products end up back, at Nabis’ distribution center.

Ning hopes to keep this legal model going to try and eliminate the illegal side that he says, is hurting the cannabis industry.

“Continuing to reform and refine regulation to make it more easy for legal operators, that will drive ultimate economic demand to the legal market as opposed to the illicit market,” said Ning.

This more than likely won’t be the only center that will be built in Woodlake.

If business is good, according to the owners, they can build two more distribution facilities just like it.