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MTI Blog

12/1/11 - How Adding Value Adds Maine Jobs

Sometimes, MTI funding results directly in a business’ ability to raise follow-on capital, bring products and services to market and create good jobs in Maine. Other times, MTI’s funding contributes to Maine’s growth over time.

Here is one example of how an MTI funded effort contributed to bringing jobs back and adding new jobs to rural Maine.

Across the state, Mainers cheered the news this fall of the re-opening of the paper mill in Millinocket. The reopening was triggered by a deal brokered by the state with Cate Street Capital, an investment group based in Portsmouth, NH that specializes in renewable energy and green technology projects. As part of their decision process, Cate Street Capital consulted a study which MTI had funded several years ago that recommended that Maine consider producing thermal, or torrified, wood.   As a result of their investment, more than 200 workers returned to their jobs in East Millinocket this October.

Closed in 2008 and followed last April by the closure of the East Millinocket plant, the silent Millinocket mills had cast a dark shadow on a community that for generations had based their livelihoods and lifestyles on manufacturing paper.  As the mills were closing, the Maine Pulp and Paper Association, together with partners from Maine and Canada, applied to the Maine Technology Institute for a grant that would enable them to look at the best, high-value use of Maine’s forest products in the future. They were awarded a $200,000 grant matched by funding from industry and other partners that enabled them to study ways to strengthen their industry.  Among the recommendations from the study was to look at the production of thermal, or torrefied, wood as a replacement for coal. The biomass-based, coal-like product is made into pellets. The process uses the same basic raw material – wood pulp-- as paper and, as the study found, the market is strong particularly in Europe where power plants must meet tough emission standards.

That report with its recommendations was a key part of the package of research and information that the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) was able to provide to Cate Street Capital during their due diligence to decide whether to invest in the mills, according to DECD’s Rosaire Pelletier.

Today, the Millinocket community is more optimistic for its future and is actively engaged in developing a process to make torrefied wood.  Cate Street Capital expects the new process to generate 80-100 new jobs and, according to the Department of Economic and Community Development, there is potential for up to four times that number of indirect jobs across the state.  “The future is bright.” Said Cate Street Capital spokesman Scott Tranchemontagne in an interview with the Bangor Daily News. “This is not pie-in-the-sky. We have done our due diligence and are moving forward with torrefied wood.”

This is one example that marries Maine’s natural resources, workers in our rural communities, clean technology innovation and partners inside and outside of the state that holds the promise of creating and retaining jobs in Maine.  With the recent $1.25 million grant that the US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration awarded to the Cleantech Innovations New England, in which MTI is a partner, we expect to see similar ventures speed to success and contribute to a more prosperous Maine economy in the years ahead.

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