“A Belfast seafood products company that was working on an expansion at a vacant warehouse will have to wait a little longer after a fire sparked at the warehouse Thursday morning. Ducktrap River of Maine, based in the city’s business park, purchased a former apparel manufacturing facility across the street last summer. The company then launched a $5 million push to convert the building to produce cold-smoked salmon.”
Source: BDN Maine
State lawmakers are debating how much they can tax recreational marijuana without driving consumers back to the black market.On Wednesday, the lawmakers charged with crafting Maine’s marijuana regulatory system struggled to find that “sweet spot” of taxing enough to pay for the cost of enforcing the law and some drug prevention, and hopefully making the state at least some money, but not taxing it so much that consumers will still buy their marijuana from a street dealer.
Source: Portland Press Herald
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it will buy up to $10 million in surplus frozen Maine wild blueberries.
Source: Maine Public
Hundreds of units of former military housing in Brunswick and Topsham have been sold to an investment group in a real estate deal worth tens of millions of dollars.
Source: IPortland Press Herald
A federally funded economic development organization that has helped bring and save hundreds of jobs to depressed areas of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and upstate New York is slated for elimination under President Donald Trump’s budget.
Source Maine Public
FairPoint Communications’ new owner has agreed to invest $52.2 million in its networks and facilities in Maine if regulators approve a merger between the company that serves northern New England and its potential new owner, Illinois-based Consolidated Communications. The stipulation leaves open questions of how Consolidated plans to find $55 million in annual savings through “synergies” but lays out a three-year investment plan sought by the Office of the Public Advocate and unions.
Source: BDN Maine
“There doesn’t seem to be as wide an appetite for some of these new wind farms in northern New England that there was even just a few years before. And I’m not sure if that’s going to change anytime soon,” says Dan Dolan, executive director of the New England Power Generators Association.Dolan and many other industry players note that Maine wind energy projects were shut out last fall when they bid on a big southern New England clean energy power contract. Solar and wind projects closer to the demand centers were the real winners.
Source: Maine Public
The seller of ACA individual insurance was $3.7 million in the black for the first quarter after two years of big losses.
Source: Portland Press Herald
Residents voted “No” on six referendum questions this month, prohibiting all varieties of recreational cannabis businesses and making the rural York County town the first in southern Maine to become a “dry town” in a state with newly legalized recreational marijuana.
Source: Portland Press Herald
Hinckley Yachts is planning a 19,500-square-foot expansion at its Southwest Harbor service yard.The Mount Desert Islander reported the investment is expected to be $1 million. The company produces high-end luxury yachts at its Trenton plant, runs a service yard and marina in Southwest Harbor, and has additional service yards in Northeast Harbor and elsewhere along the East Coast.
Source: Mainebiz.biz