THE D IN R & D

During 11 years and through numerous proposals, grants, testing, pilot and demonstration and countless hours of work, University of Maine professors and engineering students have pushed, shoved, tugged, coaxed and pulled the university’s wood-composites lab out of the realm of a good idea to the point this week where it produced a new business in the region, taking the second step in the research-and-development promise.

Wood composites are a glued-up sandwich of low-quality hardwoods, often combined with a thin layer of fiber-reinforced polymer, creating a super strong timber that can be used in bridge or home construction, shaped into piers or sports equipment. On the frequent public tours of the UMaine Advanced Engineering Wood Composites Facility, Professor Habib J. Dagher often compares the economics of making a $2.50 stud vs. using less wood, a $70 skateboard. This is not just ensuring that no fish leaves Maine with its head on – a phrase Gov. King used to highlight the importance of value-added products – it is poaching that fish and serving it up at a five-star restaurant.

Professor Dagher deserves more credit than anyone for making this happen. But just as apparent on Monday in Bangor, where the announcement was made for the new business, Engineered Materials of Maine, was the number of Maine people behind the effort. Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. John Baldacci were applauded for securing essential federal funding to get the project going and keep it going. UMaine President Peter Hoff has made research and development a key part of the university. State Sen. Mary Cathcart was among the original lawmakers to see the value in these types of investments and pushed for state funding.

The new business would not have begun without a large investment from Bangor businessman Chip Hutchins, who spoke forcefully of his family’s ties to the Bangor community and the need to contribute to it. President Hoff reinforced the idea of investment by talking about the state’s overall approach to R&D – “which creates a pipeline of ideas leading from basic research to new concepts to new technologies to patents to spinoffs and business incubation to venture capital investment to successful firms with solid bottom lines and plenty of well paying jobs to a region with a sound economy.”

The new wood-composites business is expected to eventually employ 75 people – not an especially large number in a city Bangor’s size. But the type of jobs and their importance as a high-profile example of going from R to D, like the sensor research at UMaine, makes them a big deal.

It is big for Bangor, as well, which is properly looking toward the university increasingly often as a partner. The city acquired the building for the 40,000-square-foot production facility, added $100,000 in improvements and will lease it to EMM. Bangor’s willingness to take this type of measured risk is imperative to the health of the city’s future.

One of the speakers Monday made the observation that students studying engineering in wood composites learn in addition to their field, how to start a business. The same is true for the burgeoning municipal-university partnership – both know their own areas, now they are learning how to make business work between them.