MILLINOCKET, Maine — A Rockport housing developer plans to create as many as 150 jobs in five years with a $20 million biomass furnace factory he hopes to build at Huber Industrial Park next year.
Joseph M. Cloutier, president of RE-Gen LLC of Rockport, seeks town help to secure up to $10 million in federally tax-exempt bonds through the Finance Authority of Maine. He met with the Town Council in executive session for an hour Thursday before councilors publicly expressed their support.
The project, councilors said, would generate $300,000 in local tax revenues annually and be a tonic for a depressed Katahdin region economy reeling from paper mill layoffs and shutdowns. It could spark other industries, including hydroponic greenhouses, wholesale electricity manufacture and any form of light manufacturing that employs large amounts of industrial electricity at the park.
“This is something we have been waiting for for a long time,” Councilor Jimmy Busque said Thursday. “You can rest assured that every town in the state would love to have this in their town.”
Under Cloutier’s plan, the 50,000-square-foot factory would employ welders, fabricators, service technicians and administrators to build Italian-designed, enviro-friendly biomass gasification furnaces capable of generating 700,000 to 5 million Btu. The units would be large and efficient enough to heat schools, hospitals and of-fice and apartment buildings for a fraction of the cost it takes to heat with No. 2 heating oil, Cloutier said.
Woodsmen also would provide the very low-grade green waste wood chips (up to 80 percent moisture) that would burn in the ultra-high-heat furnaces, he said.
Larger units capable of generating as much as 20 million Btu, which would manufacture enough electricity to sell to the New England power grid, also would be available and distributed, but not manufactured, at the site, Cloutier said.
If all goes well, the plant would be built by 50 construction workers in late summer 2010 and employ eight full-time workers on-site, plus seven biomass fuel suppliers. At year three, 50 factory workers and 15 loggers and machine operators would be employed; at year five, 100 factory workers and 50 woodsmen would have jobs, according to the executive summary of his plan.
“There is a tremendous market for this kind of technology,” Cloutier said. “This technology that we are bringing to Millinocket doesn’t exist in the U.S. It is in Europe.”
The company chose to locate in Millinocket because it borders the largest contiguous tract of forest in North America and has a skilled work force of woodsmen and welders.
Cloutier, who helped turn the former Maine Avenue high school into the Stearns Assisted Living Center nine years ago, also likes the area. He plans to use the center as one of several showplaces for a working furnace and wants Millinocket to become a national base for his furnace manufacture and distribution, he said.
Cloutier owns or operates about 70 assisted living centers around Maine and New England, many of which will be converted to biomass heat over the next year, if all goes well. The company plans to have its technology licensing by August and begin selling furnaces by early spring 2010, when plant construction would begin.
The United States is decades behind Europe in its exploitation of biomass technology, where furnaces such as those RE-Gen wants to build are common, said Chad Armstrong, lead engineer for the biomass co-gen technology manufacturing, sales, installation, service and fuel supply company.
With its sales and manufacture, the company hopes to cut No. 2 heating oil usage by 16 million gallons, replacing it with wood chip burning, in five years, company Chief Operating Officer Fred Campbell said.
The town is under no financial risk in working with RE-Gen, said Town Manager Eugene Conlogue, who has worked quietly with Cloutier on the project for about a year.
Under the federal industrial revenue bond program, a municipality and state must approve the application to show that the bonds will provide jobs or some other form of economic development to a town or region.
A company can seek industrial revenue bonds in an amount up to the cost of any capital improvement, solid waste control or pollution control project. Industrial revenue bonds are tax-exempt, low-interest loans paid back by businesses over a long period of time, typically more than 20 years.
By supporting the bond, the town and FAME would not be liable for payment of the bonds if the corporation defaults on them, officials said. Instead, the company would put up a guarantee — a payback agreement — on the bonds.
RE-Gen officials already have met with state officials to discuss the bond issue. They will likely meet with Gov. John Baldacci over the next month or so, Cloutier said.
“I am about 80 percent confident that this project is going to happen,” he said.