Mainebiz

V O L . X X I I N O. X V I J U LY 1 1 , 2 0 1 6 14 J ames Chittum sees a tremendous opportunity for Maine companies that make products using renewable biobased resources from forest, farm and sea instead of petroleum-based compounds such as polyethylene or polystyrene. As director of business development at Grow-Tech LLC, Chittum says the company is capitalizing on strong global for its biobased peat "plugs," propaga- tion trays and rooting substrate layers used for seed germination, transplanting tree seedlings and growing hydroponic salad greens. Roughly 25% of Grow-Tech's sales are to export markets. e company got its start in the 1980s when Dole Food Co. was looking for ways to boost production in its lettuce fi elds. Its 30,000-square- foot plant at 165 Pleasant Ave. in South Portland now has 43 employees and runs two to three shifts a day to keep up with demand. "Consumers want safer, more sustainable products," says Charlotte Mace, executive director of Biobased Maine, a trade group that works with Grow-Tech and other companies. "Companies, increasingly, are setting stringent sustainability goals. Biobased products are quickly outperforming products made from petro- chemicals. Global demand is key to this growth." Growing Maine's biobased economy Along with Grow-Tech, Mace says Maine's biobased manufacturing sector includes companies like Tom's of Maine, Maine Standard Biofuels, Cerealus, True Textiles, the Environmental Health Strategy Center, the University of Maine's Forest Bioproducts Research Institute and Trout Brook Enterprises — all of which are member partners in the nonprofi t trade group. Her organization's mission is to grow the sector. " ere's sharply rising global demand for renew- able resources that come from forest, farm and sea," she says. " is is straight from Bloomberg: Virtually any biobased products you can think of — chemi- cals, bioplastics, advanced biofuels — they have double-digit annual growth. Biobased food and beverage packaging? Double digits." e biobased industry has an estimated value of $369 billion, with four million workers, according to a 2014 study published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. e market for bioplastics is increasing by 20% to 30% per year, though the USDA report said "there is a potential to produce two-thirds of the total volume of chemicals from biobased mate- rials, representing over 50,000 products, a $1 trillion annual global market." A separate study by the Biotechnology Industry Organization estimates that U.S.-based jobs for the renewable chemicals sector will rise from approxi- mately 40,000 jobs in 2011, which represents 3% to 4% of all chemical sales, to more than 237,000 jobs by 2025 and approximately 20% of total chemical sales. Maine is positioned to capitalize on new and promising technologies that can extract high-value, Mace argues, citing biobased chemicals, fuels and materials from pulp wood, which can then be used to make a whole host of everyday products. What's lacking, she says, is a road map to get there. Road map to a biobased future Biobased Maine has partnered with the University of Maine in Orono in a grant application to the U.S. Economic Development Administration to create a strategy for expanding Maine's biobased manufacturing sector. She expects to hear from the EDA soon if that application was successful. " e fi rst piece of our strategy is to draft this road map that includes all the information that investors want to know: What would be the cost curves for all of the diff erent sources of wood fi ber?" she says. "It also would include an inventory of our industrial infrastructure. Often investors don't want to build a new facility. ey want to use a facility that's already there and permitted. It's important to note that a lot of the industrial infra- structure used at a pulp and paper mill — such as a digester — is also needed for capturing cellulosic sugars from trees." Selling points would include Maine's workforce, its transportation assets (including deep-water ports in Eastport, Searsport and Portland) and the R&D work being done at UMaine's Forest Bioproducts Research Institute. P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY New directions for forest products A Maine initiative capitalizes on demand for biobased products B y J a M e s M c c a r T h y James Chittum, director of business development at Grow-Tech LLC, talks with Charlotte Mace, executive director of the trade group Biobased Maine, about her organization's efforts to create a "road map" for expanding biobased manufacturing in Maine.

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