A North Carolina building materials manufacturer expects to create about 100 new jobs at a new factory in Maine.
The Bangor Daily News reports that LignaTerra Global will establish a 300,000-square-foot facility at the site of a former paper mill in the town of Lincoln, about an hour north of Bangor. The town acquired the nearly 77-acre site and plans to either sell or lease the property to LignaTerra, which makes a composite wood material known as cross-laminated timber.
The company is expected to invest $31 million in the project, which will also be supported by investors taking advantage of the town’s designation as a federal Opportunity Zone. Investors that back development in those zones are eligible for capital gains tax breaks, the Daily News noted.
The project was initially intended for a former mill in nearby Millinocket, the paper reported, but that effort was reportedly derailed by a $1.5 million federal tax debt.
LignaTerra officials said the Lincoln site offered easy access to both large markets in the northeastern U.S. and needed renewable materials from nearby “healthy, working forests.”
“Central Maine, and Lincoln specifically, has proven to be an ideal location for value-added timber products,” Nick Holgorsen, a co-founding partner of the company, told the paper.
Lincoln officials, meanwhile, hope the project will ultimately create a small ecosystem of forest products-based companies.
