CARIBOU — A local business development organization cited successes in forestry and manufacturing and the continuing need to grow the next generation’s workforce as key take-aways from 2016.
According to Aroostook Partnership President Robert Dorsey, last year was a busy year, with the partnership’s top priorities being promoting local job awareness, expanding collaborations between business and education, growing the forestry part of the economy and expanding the area’s manufacturing growth potential.
“We completed the merger of LEAD [Leaders Encouraging Aroostook Development] and APP [Aroostook Partnership for Progress], and made great progress on how we’ll organize to lead economic development efforts going forward,” Dorsey said in a Dec. 23 newsletter from AP and the Northern Maine Development Commission.
He said the partnership helped host live political debates with WAGM that were aired statewide and coordinated the Entrepreneur of the Year contest, won by the Buck family, owners of Maine Malt House in Mapleton. As a matter of fact, Dorsey said, Maine Malt is expanding their production facility to quadruple their product development to satisfy the heavy demand for malt that is ‘made in Maine’.
“From a County growth perspective, we saw moderate growth with about $77 million of investment and approximately 75 new jobs created. That brings our five-year totals to about $750 million of total investment and 714 new jobs created.
“Generally, our forestry and manufacturing sectors observed the most success and there were also new capabilities added in healthcare and agriculture. We saw new restaurants open and a number of positive developments emerge that could set the stage for some significant future employment,” Dorsey stated.
AP purchased the ‘Virtual Job Shadow’ program for 17 County high schools to help students better understand career choices, and sponsored three business/teacher socials around the region, where employers met with guidance counselors and teachers to discuss the job forecast, education requirements and qualities future employees should have.
Dorsey said the socials were successful and the partnership plans to continue them in 2017.
In forestry and manufacturing, Louisiana Pacific (LP) and Huber had excellent years, with LP looking to hire another 20 employees to return to full-time operation and the Irving mill looking to expand and hire another 20 employees. Twin Rivers paper company is investing another $12 million to upgrade a machine and have moved their research efforts from Quebec to the University of Maine.
However, the energy sector was not so fortunate, as major wind projects at Number 9 Mountain and King Pine halted progress when expected funding from the Emera/CMP Maine Renewal Energy Interconnect did not materialize. The good news, Dorsey said, si that the companies believe the projects will continue in the future.
Dorsey cited other 2016 highlights, including:
– AP’s Forest Cluster celebrated the passing of two key pieces of legislation getting the state to purchase biomass power from ReEnergy and eliminating the off-road diesel tax for loggers to help them lower costs.
– Smith & Wesson in Houlton is planning to transfer their handcuff production allowing room to install more CNC machines to grow their main plant production.
– Porvair in Caribou continues to grow, having built their new ‘clean room,’ and they want to hire more personnel, more than doubling their previous business base.
– In Presque Isle, ACME Monaco recently signed their new lease agreement and has started their $2.3M upgrade that should conclude in 2017.
– Pineland Farms in Mars Hill continued to hire more employees and started another expansion effort.
– Smith Farms experienced new competition from a firm in New York but continued to be successful and had great success with their new solar system.
