Mainebiz

B U S I N E S S M A I N E B U S I N E S S M A I N E B U S I N E S S N E W S F RO M A RO U N D T H E S TAT E on select store shelves, including L.L.Bean and Renys locations across the state. While the bulk of Maine Stitching's business is in manufac- turing draperies and curtains for the hospitality industry, owner Bill Swain told the Bangor Daily News that the company shipped thousands of flags to retailers this year. And 2017 will bring even more of a focus to the flag-making sector of Maine Stitching, which currently consists of one employee whose entire job is to stitch the stripes of the nylon flags together. "Our goal for next year is to sell 10,000," Swain told the BDN. "at's really what we're working toward, and at that level it's profit- able and efficient to manufacture." Nationwide, American flags from all makers yield about $302 million in annual sales. N O T E W O R T H Y C E N T R A L & W E S T E R N Larry Robinson, center director at Maine Manufacturing Extension Partnership, has been appoint- ed to the brand council of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership, based in Gaithersburg, Md. FairPoint Communications announced the completion of a broadband up- grade project in Auburn that provides faster broadband speeds to over 620 locations in the community, some to addresses for the first time. The Maine Health Access Foundation in Augusta selected seven Maine nonprofits to participate in a Financial Leadership Clinic conducted by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a na- tional consulting group. Participating E l e m e n t s : B o o k s C o f f e e B e e r A d i r o n d a c k s o n M a i n St r e e t Federal team established to aid forest product industry Maine's forest product industry will be the focus of a fed- eral economic development team, the U.S. Department of Commerce said June 30. It plans to establish an integrated, multi-agency Economic Development Assessment Team to evaluate the industry after a string of paper mill closures. The catalyst for the EDAT came from a March 2016 letter from Maine's congressional delegation to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. The goal of the EDAT will be to use multiple federal gov- ernment agencies and solicit stakeholder input, to create economic development strategies to assist job growth in rural Maine communities, many of which have been hit the hardest by the recent hardships of the forest product industry. Federal agencies resources available to an EDAT include the Economic Development Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy. "This announcement is welcome news for Maine," Maine's congressional delegation said in a joint statement. "Our for- est products industry is a central part of the state's heritage and a vital pillar of the state's economy, and an Economic Development Assessment Team will assist local public and private stakeholders in coordinating strategies so the industry can continue to be a source of good-paying jobs for Mainers for generations to come." In her letter announcing the creation of the assessment team, Pritzker said that the Commerce Department will deploy an EDAT that will work on site in northern Maine for three days in July, where it will "participate in a comprehensive set of stakeholder meetings to evaluate new and existing economic strategies for addressing the state's forest-based economic challenges," according to a release. Pritzker added that the forest product EDAT will be mod- eled off the National Disaster Framework and will be similar to teams that have worked on other economic development crises including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the 2011 Joplin EF-5 tornado disaster. "At the conclusion of the EDAT process, regional and local stakeholders will have a bottom-up strategy, developed with input from their Federal partners, designed to foster robust economic growth and recovery," Pritzker wrote in her letters to Maine's congressional delegation. "EDATs are not designed to be a silver bullet, but EDA and its Federal partners are com- mitted to working closely with you and the Maine stakehold- ers to come to help struggling communities statewide work toward building a robust and enduring economy." — M a i n e b i z S t a f f

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