A machine operator at Tanbark Molded Fiber Products, a Maine company that designs and manufactures sustainable packaging using pulp from Maine trees and other plant fibers. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Maine has received $22 million in federal funding to tap its abundant forests and scale up commercial development of new wood-based technology, such as environmentally friendly building and packaging materials, the state’s congressional delegation and Gov. Janet Mills announced Wednesday.

The funding is earmarked for the state’s Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub, which is led by the Maine Technology Institute. Federal money will pay to stand up the hub with management and staff and provide grants for innovative technology proposed by companies, said Brian Whitney, president of the Maine Technology Institute.

The other half of the funding will be earmarked to the University of Maine to commercialize business ideas, work with companies to prove their concepts and conduct tests to validate their ideas, he said.

Jake Ward, a University of Maine vice president and head of the Office of Strategic Partnerships, Innovation, Resources and Engagement, said the biggest challenge is to scale up industrial processes to bring products to market. Companies and their products are lined up in an accelerator, and the funding “will make it happen in a faster, more strategic way,” he said.

With the decline of employment in Maine’s pulp and paper industry, the industry, government and others have developed new wood-based products to reduce the use of plastics and other fossil fuel-based materials. The federal funding is intended to promote new manufacturing technologies and innovations, provide technical assistance and use workforce and other resources of the Tech Hub to accelerate new products. Ward cited materials processing that breaks down wood fiber from a tree and combines it with other materials to create a range of products such as building materials, fuels and textiles, for example.

“Maine is a leader in the forest products industry, both here at home and around the globe,” Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden said in a news release announcing the grant. “An investment in our forestry sector is a direct investment into Maine’s economy and future.”

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Tanbark Molded Fiber Products in Saco is one company that’s finding new uses for wood by replacing single-use plastic foam, rigid plastic and plastic-coated containers for restaurants such as Luke’s Lobster. Molded fiber — the process of taking a fibrous material and molding it into something that’s strong and resilient — is the most promising replacement of single-use plastics, CEO Melissa LaCasse said in a phone interview.

Tanbark has benefited from loans and awards from the Maine Technology Institute to scale up, and LaCasse said federal funding to the Tech Hub will “supercharge” development of the state’s revamped forestry industry.

Maine’s share of the federal money is part of an overall $210 million headed to six tech hubs in the U.S. promoting aerospace manufacturing, artificial intelligence-driven biotechnology, mineral processing and other technologies.

The Biden administration in 2023 designated Maine’s Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub as one of the tech hubs, recognizing the forest bioproducts sector’s potential for rapid growth that could draw federal money.

A consortium including the University of Maine, Roux Institute, Maine Community College System, Sappi, Idexx, Thornton Tomasetti, FOR/Maine, the AFL-CIO, the Maine Venture Fund, and other organizations and institutions proposed the Tech Hub.

Maine has the largest contiguous privately owned working forest in the U.S., has more than 30,000 skilled workers in the wood supply chain, and is the No. 1 global public supplier of cellulose nanofiber, made from wood pulp and used in various products such as biomedical devices, paper and concrete, according to the Tech Hub.

Efforts to capitalize on the economic potential of Maine’s forests date to 2016, when Collins and King urged the Commerce Department to establish and lead an economic development effort to leverage the power of federal agencies to promote job growth in rural Maine. They cited the decline of Maine’s pulp and paper industry and the loss of thousands of forest and manufacturing jobs, creating an “economic crisis that requires urgent action.”

From 2000 to 2020, average employment in pulp and paper mills dropped by 72% in Maine and 51% across the U.S., according to a report in September by the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability. Maine had the highest concentration of private-sector employment in pulp and paper mills of any U.S. state: nearly 1%, according to the report. The national average is 0.1%.

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