Numinus Wellness Inc., a company creating an ecosystem of health solutions centered around the safe, evidence-based and accessible use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies, has plans to expand its footprint across the country.
Stacey Wallin, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder, said the company is headquartered in Vancouver with locations in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and in Montreal.
The company was started in 2019.
“We’re a mental health and wellness leader, specifically with expertise in providing what we call psychedelic assisted psychotherapy — really actually from the supply of psychedelics all the way through program development and into therapy delivery,” explained Wallin.
“We really have three different business units. The first one is our Numinus Bioscience lab which is licensed by Health Canada to do a variety of research activities and provide contract services for a range of psychedelic substances. At the lab we do things such as analytical testing or the development of formulations, production of final products. We can actually sell and supply to other clinical researchers or licensed groups.
“Then we have an R&D unit and this unit trains therapists, develops therapeutic policies and protocols, and actually leads and conducts clinical trials. This is really our testing ground where we R&D everything that we do.
“Lastly we have our Health unit where we provide actual client-facing therapy and supportive services delivery. This is via specially-designed clinics and also via virtual platforms.”
Currently, the company has three clinics — two in Montreal under the name Mindspace Wellbeing, and one in Vancouver.
The Montreal clinic, which Numinus acquired, is an example of what the company can do as it has about 40 practitioners and offers a variety of services such as psychology, psychiatry, counselling, and mindfulness.
“Numinus spelled the way that it would normally be with an ‘ous’ at the end is actually like the presence of divinity or having a strong religious or spiritual quality or suggesting the presence of divinity. There’s a couple of different definitions but it’s really around being mysterious or awe-inspiring or arousing spiritual or religious emotion,” added Wallin.
Numinus treatment room. Rendering: De Style Design 
Numinus treatment room. Rendering: De Style Design
“We offer a variety of different therapies. So we do psychedelic therapies which are used alongside a host of other offerings which can include psychotherapies, mindfulness practices and lifestyle options. This is a combination of traditional one-to-one in a psychotherapeutic offering as well as our psychedelic-assisted therapy protocols as regulations allow. And then also relationship centred or community centred care with different protocols for different kinds of patients where we’re cultivating community and peer forms of healing.”
Numinus is a leader in the industry as the first public company in Canada to receive a licence to produce and extract psilocybin from mushrooms, the first to complete a legal harvest of psilocybe mushrooms using this licence, and the holder of a Health Canada dealer’s licence to import, export, possess, test, and distribute MDMA, psilocybin, psilocin, DMT, and mescaline.
Don Gregor, Executive Vice-President of Aurora Realty Consultants Inc. — which is handling the real estate side of things — said the company will be looking at developing a hub and spoke type of rollout across Canada.
“The idea being that there will be the community-based spokes which will offer conventional psychiatry, psychology and the typical types of services you would get in a lot of one-on-one treatments, a lot of talking with a counsellor, and after a number of sessions people may be referred to a larger hub facility where they would potentially get additional medical treatment,” said Gregor.
These facilities will be located in traditional and non-traditional medical, office and retail commercial real estate facilities with emphasis on client access and convenience, said Gregor.
“The community-based clinics will probably be about 2,500 square feet on average. Maybe 3,000 square feet and they’ll have a conventional office type of feel to them. What Numinus had really engaged us for is they want to try and get away from the conventional medical feel of the clinic and get away from the stigma associated with mental health,” said Gregor.
“So we’re really going to try and avoid the real medical building, medical clinic type of scenario. They approached us to try and make it more mainstream and make mental health, part of what everybody’s talking about and open the discussion and make it more part of people’s lifestyle. We’ll be considering street fronts. We’ll be considering potentially grocery-anchored shopping centres for these smaller community hubs.
“The larger hub facility that the spokes will feed will probably be about 8,000 to 10,000 square feet, possibly as large as 12,000. And they will be built with more medical consideration. There will be treatment rooms and specialty electrical HVAC and temperature control.”
Wallin said a number of factors will determine how many locations the company eventually opens. Those include finding the right and available space in the right locations.
“At this point, we’re not disclosing a number but we do have a really ambitious growth strategy in place for this year above and beyond acquiring Mindspace and (the Vancouver location) but I can’t disclose specifics at this time,” she said.
Expansion by the company is targeting both acquisitions and purpose-built facilities.
Recently, Numinus announced it has closed a bought deal financing of 28 million units of the company at a price of $1.25 per unit for total gross proceeds of $35 million.
With the close of the offering, Numinus now has $65 million on hand and it said it is well capitalized to act on revenue-generating growth initiatives including the Numinus Bioscience lab expansion, clinic acquisitions and purpose-built flagship facilities.
“I want to thank our investors for their overwhelming confidence in our vision of bringing forward safe and evidence-based approaches to mental health challenges, including through the delivery of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies,” said Payton Nyquvest, President and CEO of Numinus. “Millions of people struggle with depression, anxiety, trauma, pain, and substance use, and are seeking novel approaches that are intended to cure rather than manage symptoms. Our financing puts us in a strong position to drive much needed innovation in mental healthcare and provides the necessary resources to create new ways to support healing and wellness.”
The offering’s net proceeds are expected to be used to acquire and build local community clinics and flagship facilities offering a wide variety of amenities including psychotherapy, health and wellness services and, when regulated, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. The remaining net proceeds will be used for general working capital purposes.
