Mainebiz

V I E W P O I N T S W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 3 D E C E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 2 3 Featured @ Mainebiz.biz For a daily digest of Maine's top business news, sign up for the Mainebiz Daily Report at mainebiz.biz/enews Get all the news every day on Mainebiz.biz or by subscribing to the Daily Report and Real Estate Insider newsletters. Here's the top online content from Nov. 21 to Dec. 5: 1. Sale of 3-bedroom home in Falmouth illustrates Maine's still-pricey home market 2. For the first time, a Maine ZIP code cracks New England's priciest for home sales 3. Decades old and family-run, a Maine charter bus service changes hands 4. Three Maine restaurants named to OpenTable Top 100 list 5. A South Portland brewery will close its doors after 6-year run 6. $61M rehab hospital proposed for Bangor by fast-growing national chain 7. Keeping fraud in check: Maine banks combat rising wave of check fraud 8. Mainers are making moves: a roundup of recent leadership changes in banking 9. Maine manufacturer of high-temp materials will expand, driven by defense, space industries 10. 'Thankful for the simple things': What 10 Mainers are grateful for this Thanksgiving P ROV I D E D P H O T O / Z I L L OW 1 bernsteinshur.com Meet Chris Dargie. His experience and insight runs the gamut of business law—from serving as lead counsel to international organizations on major M&A transactions to startups raising capital, and every matter in between. We're attorneys. But we're people first. Chris Dargie, Attorney and Shareholder From the Editor W hile the number of manufacturing jobs in Maine has fallen from historic levels in the early 1990s — when there were as many as 95,000 workers — the number has rebounded from the low of 45,000 in April 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. ere are now an estimated 55,300 manufactur- ing workers in Maine, by the Fed's count. ose workers — and the 1,800 manufacturing firms they represent — generate an annual GDP of $6.2 billion, according to the Manufacturers Association of Maine. Yet "manufacturing" remains a misunderstood term that many associate with smokestacks and heavy equipment. Maine's manufacturing field covers a wide range of industries and sectors, including defense, aerospace, steel, paper, boatbuilding and marine services, semiconductor, wood, textiles, aquacul- ture, biotech, medical devices, electronics, wireless communications, plastics, composites/bio-plastics and food and beverage. Take, for example, the subject of our cover story, Global Secure Shipping, is producing a new type of shipping container built from high-strength composite materials embedded with advanced sen- sors. e containers are designed to help fight theft and tampering, as Senior Writer Laurie Schreiber reports. e container uses technology developed at the University of Maine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. "ere's a great deal of interest in utilizing the technology to reduce theft and pilferage and to reduce tampering," the CEO tells Mainebiz. For more, see Laurie's story, "Safe passage," which starts on Page 12. Peter Van Allen pvanallen@mainebiz.biz There are now an estimated 55,300 manufacturing workers in Maine, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. Don't sleep on Maine's manufacturing industry

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