SCARBOROUGH, Maine — A group of three entrepreneurs hopes to spin Maine wood fiber into gold.
Leaders of GLOBEco Maine said the company has made progress on its plans to bring new manufacturing to Dover-Foxcroft, where it aims to make its wood-fiber cloths. The company’s pitch is first to retail customers seeking a locally made, sustainable and compostable replacement for cotton or paper towels.
But the company’s lead researcher, chief technology officer Bob Chiosi, said it could be much more than that.
“There are a lot of spinoff products that can come from the basic anti-microbial [cloth],” Chiosi said.
The company has received $60,000 through five grants from the Maine Technology Institute to develop that cloth, with a disinfecting compound bound to the cloth that would last through repeated rinsing. It’s now seeking another $107,000 from the Maine Technology Institute. Phil Pastore, the company’s CEO, said that product and other spinoffs could lead to new employment up and down the supply chain, from the forest to finished product.
“We think there are many products in between, and we think Maine can be at the forefront of that,” Pastore said. “We’re trying to plant the seed for this new industry that we think we can bring to fruition in a relatively short time.”
While a response to the company’s April request for a federal grant of up to $240,000 — administered by the state’s economic development agency — is pending, Pastore said some of GLOBEco’s plans are moving ahead. Seeking to appease state and federal officials who Pastore said wanted to know the company’s location before determining the fate of that grant, the company arranged two conditional leases on a building in Dover-Foxcroft two weeks ago.
Doug Ray, spokesman for the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, said in an email that a decision on the federal grant, which will be allocated by the Department of Economic and Community Development, is likely weeks away. If GLOBEco wins the grant, Pastore said the lease will be made final.
Pastore declined to identify the location of the Dover-Foxcroft building but said it is not the Creative Apparel building it had eyed earlier this year.
“[We] will be locating in another smaller building to start operations and may end up in the Creative [Apparel] building as operations grow by the end of year one,” Pastore said.
As for what happens in the first year, Pastore said the company aims to start small, hiring about five people to manufacture the wood-fiber cloths it previously imported from China to sell at 2,000 retail stores in the United States.
Pastore said that importing relationship ended and is on hiatus as GLOBEco seeks to line up production in the United States.
That all depends on the grant, Pastore said, though they’ve considered other financing options and other locations outside of Maine as well.
Chiosi said the benefit of manufacturing in Maine would be reduced transportation costs and a reduced carbon footprint. The reduction in shipping costs and gains in efficiency by producing in the United States would offset the savings from lower relative wages in Asia, Pastore said.
“We have the highest efficiency production of anywhere in the world because we automate and semi-automate and train our workers better,” Pastore said. “I don’t think there’s any question that we can match the final product cost to what we will produce in Maine.”
Pastore said the company would start with just certain parts of manufacturing in the state, buying spun wood fiber from a plant in Canada that it would then weave, treat, cut, sew and package in Dover-Foxcroft.
Pastore said building out a spinning facility to use wood fiber from Maine forests would require the company to sell a high volume of its products from the outset.
“We’d have to build out a team very quickly,” Pastore said. “And I think it makes sense to walk before we run and grow into the [vertical] integration.”
Chiosi said another possibility is attracting a company that already specializes in spinning fiber to move to Maine.
Production in the United States also would allow the company to be more responsive to retailers, Chiosi said, adding that shipments from China require about four months of lead time before they can be delivered.
Should GLOBEco start manufacturing stateside, Chiosi said the company could call up imported product to meet demand from vendors while it ramps up production.
The company also hopes it might employ some of the more than 40 people with experience in manufacturing textiles who were laid off when military uniform maker Creative Apparel shut down earlier this year.
With the shift to domestic production, the company also plans to have more marketing muscle. Mark Snyder, a former marketing team leader and 10-year veteran at Tom’s of Maine, joined the company about two months ago.
Snyder said he joined the company because he saw a need and market for the product, capitalizing on a growing preference for locally produced and green products.
“The idea of using natural resources, using Maine workers and restarting idle plants in rural Maine, it’s a win-win,” he said.
Chiosi said the company’s also marketing the cloth for more than consumer uses, seeing potential in the service sector, such as in restaurants and hotels. He also said he thinks the anti-microbial cloth could be adapted to make sheets, hospital gowns and other products with medical applications.
“This is just one of many ideas between aerospace or a cloth like this,” Chiosi said, gesturing to a sample cloth during a recent interview. “There are hundreds and hundreds of [possible] products.”