Kim Bagley, managing director of Cardiff drug and alcohol testing business Cansford Laboratories, talks about the company's growth plans and changing approaches to workplace drug testing
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00:00So my name is Kim Bagley and this is Canceled Laboratories.
00:03And what happens here?
00:05We do drug testing in mainly hair, but we're able to do it in oral fluid and blood as well.
00:11So we look for any potentially abused drugs.
00:15That could be illegal drugs, but it could also be medications.
00:19And who are you looking for these drugs for?
00:22There's many different sectors. One would be the legal sector, which could be solicitors,
00:27anything to do with custody battles, also social services, which would be the local authorities.
00:34Again, looking after child welfare, maybe putting children back with their parents after a while away and also workplace.
00:44Get you. So how many people are here?
00:4645. We've got 45 staff, but we also have a collection network as well of people who are able to travel all over the UK collecting samples from the donors.
00:55Get you. And how's the world of testing changing or likely to change, would you say?
01:02I think the sensitivity of the instruments, the instruments are getting better and better as we go along through the years.
01:10The testing itself for workplace historically has always been urine.
01:14But I do believe that that is now changing for certainly for pre-employment.
01:19People are tending to look ahead because it's more cost effective and you've got a longer period of time covered.
01:27And urine is very invasive as well.
01:29Really, you need to be monitoring the person while they're giving you the sample, which is not very nice for them.
01:34No, I can imagine. Yeah.
01:37And do you think more employers are going to use testing for drugs and alcohol?
01:42I do believe so. I mean, there's a huge amount that already do.
01:46Again, using the historic urine test.
01:49But we are aware ourselves that a lot of people have moved over to the oral fluid or the hair.
01:55The oral fluid tends to cover about 48 hours, whereas urine covers anywhere between five and seven days.
02:02And the hair would cover seven days onwards.
02:05Every centimetre of hair length is about a month in time.
02:09So, as you can see, hair would be more cost effective if you were looking over a three-month window.
02:14Get you. And looking ahead for cancer itself, do you see this business growing over the next few years?
02:20I would really hope so. I mean, that's what our plans are.
02:22We plan to grow at least 9% per year.
02:26And we really, really want to provide a good service to anybody out there that needs this sort of testing.