North Carolina Company Planning CLT Plant In Maine, Promises 100 Jobs

by | Feb 16, 2018 | News

A North Carolina manufacturer plans to create more than 100 jobs by becoming Maine’s first producer of a composite wood strong enough to replace concrete and steel in high-rise buildings.

LignaTerra Global LLC of Charlotte announced plans at Bangor’s Husson University on Tuesday to build a $30 million, 300,000-square-foot factory to produce cross-laminated timber. Planning to build on a 35-acre portion of Millinocket’s 1,400-acre former Katahdin Paper Co. LLC site, the company hopes to break ground in July and start production in 12 months, said Nick Holgorsen, CEO and co-founding partner of LignaTerra.

One of two cross-laminated timber manufacturers in the country, LignaTerra aims to be the first investor to revitalize the site since parent company Brookfield Asset Management closed Katahdin Paper in 2008, laying off 208 workers and crippling a Katahdin region economy that had been home to world-class papermaking for more than a century. The failure of a more recent effort — Cate Street Capital’s proposed pellet mill — left current site owner Our Katahdin, a nonprofit economic development group, about $1.5 million in inherited tax debt.

LignaTerra leaders declined to say how much of the $30 million they will provide. The project’s private investors will be announced in several weeks and the company is working to secure tax breaks, said Brien Walton, director of the Center for Family Business at Husson University, who helped broker the deal.

“The bottom line is that if they wanted to do it all cash, right now, that is something that could be done, but we are trying to get the right parties and the right partners and to aggregate something that will be beneficial to the region and also sustainable to the long term,” Walton said during Tuesday’s news conference.

From the Bangor Daily News: https://bangordailynews.com/2018/02/13/business/latest-bid-to-revive-shuttered-katahdin-mill-promises-100-jobs/

Eco-Friendly ‘Plyscrapers’ Are On The Rise

by | Aug 21, 2017 | News

Ever since the 10-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago was called the first “skyscraper” in 1885, architects have been striving to create ever-taller buildings. Ten stories quickly became 20, 20 became 50, and on and on. In 2009 the Burj Khalifa in Dubai became the world’s tallest building, with its 154 floors towering above ground level.

So why is the mayor of Portland, Oregon, calling a modest 12-story tower set for completion there next year “a true technological and entrepreneurial achievement?” It’s not the affordable housing the building affords, nor its dozens of bike racks or even the roof farm that has Ted Wheeler gushing. It’s that the Framework apartment building will be made almost entirely of wood.

Once completed, Framework will be America’s tallest wooden building and its first “plyscraper” — a high-rise building built with panels made of cross-laminated timber (CLT). These modular sheets are made from cheap, sustainable softwood that are glued or pinned together in layers — a bit like super-strong, super-thick plywood.

While the raw material might vary in quality, CLT (also known as mass timber) is engineered to be stronger than concrete. CLT panels resist earthquakes and even fire, charring instead of catching alight like the lumber in typical homes.

Plyscrapers can be bolted together in days, and they require a fraction of the labor use to erect traditional steel-and-concrete high-rises. “You don’t need an experienced master carpenter to do this,” says Casey Malmquist, founder of Columbia Falls, Montana-based SmartLam, one of only two CLT manufacturers in the U.S. “It literally goes together like Legos.”

From NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/tech/eco-friendly-plyscrapers-are-rise-here-s-why-ncna793346