Business

Bangor Daily News:

Heiwa Tofu, a Maine-based tofu manufacturer founded in 2008 by former science teacher Jeff Wolovitz, is undergoing a major expansion to double the size of its Rockport facility from 2,800 to nearly 6,000 square feet. The company has grown rapidly, increasing production from 2,500 pounds per week in 2016 to 15,000 pounds currently. With the expansion—expected to finish in early 2026—Heiwa aims to boost output to 20,000 pounds per week and eventually reach 25,000–30,000 pounds.

The $1.5 million project, partially funded by federal grants, will also add new equipment, solar panels, and more employees. About a third of Heiwa’s soybeans come from Aroostook County, helping qualify it for state-administered grants supporting Maine-grown products. Heiwa tofu is sold across the Northeast in stores like Hannaford and Whole Foods, as well as locally as discounted “factory seconds.” Wolovitz credits the company’s growth to product quality and increasing demand for plant-based foods.

U.S. lobster exports to China have fallen off a cliff this year as new retaliatory tariffs shift the seafood business farther north. China, a huge and growing customer for lobster, placed heavy tariffs on U.S. lobsters — and many other food products — in July 2018 amid rising trade hostilities between the Chinese and the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, business is booming in Canada, where cargo planes are coming to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Moncton, New Brunswick, to handle a growing bump in exports.

Source: Maine Public

A Belfast-based building products company has purchased the shuttered Madison mill, and says it expects manufacturing to resume there by this time next year. GO Lab closed last Friday on the former UPM paper mill in Madison, which ceased operations about three years ago. Company President Joshua Henry says they’ll eventually produce three different types of wood fiber insulation.

Source: Maine Public

Sheepscot General Farm, of Whitefield, will test a new crop this year — and a new way of selling the crop — when it opens a pick-your-own hemp field in September. Ben Marcus and Taryn Hammer Marcus, owners of Sheepscot General Farm LLC and Sheepscot General LLC, hope the crop — and demand for the active ingredient of cannabidiol, or CBD — will supplement their already popular pick-your-own organic strawberries.

Source: BDN Maine

Fairlawn Golf & Country Club  (opened in 1963)

Poland, Maine

Source: Craigslist

Lately, downtown Bucksport looks a lot like this idealized picture of a downtown, but it wasn’t always that way.

In 2014, after over eight decades of operation, the Verso paper mill shut down in Bucksport. The town was devastated. Over 500 employees lost their jobs, the town tax base shrunk by 40 percent and the economic heart of the town stopped beating.

Source:  BDN Maine

Atlantic salmon farming has made news in Maine recently with construction of a $180 million, indoor salmon farm due to start in Bucksport this fall and another entirely land-based farm seeking permits to build in Belfast.

But so far, the only company raising salmon in Maine is New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture, which has its operation spread between hatcheries in western Maine, pens in the Gulf of Maine and a processing plant in Machiasport. Cooke’s operation, partially on land and partially in pen stocks at sea, differs from the operations proposed in Belfast and Bucksport in key ways.

The company has been raising salmon in Maine since 2004, and it has effectively built itself a salmon monopoly in the Gulf of Maine in that time. Since 2016, the New Brunswick-based corporation has invested about $2 million in its Maine facilities and it expects some growth in its operation over the next two years, according to company spokesman Andrew Lively.

Source: Maine Public