COLUMBIA FALLS – Zane Emerson has spent the better part of two years trying to solve a very expensive problem for small blueberry growers.

His efforts and a $90,000 grant from the Maine Technology Institute have paid off.

Emerson has designed and built a small motor-powered harvester that one person can push around a blueberry field, raking berries off the bushes and stopping only to unload full boxes of the fruit. Because a patent is pending on his invention, Emerson does not want it photographed or described in much detail at the moment.

But he expects that his company – Maine Blueberry Equipment – will have the harvester in the hands of a dozen growers in time for the August harvest season.

“I’d expect this machine to get at least 400 boxes a day, maybe more, ” Emerson said during an interview in his Columbia Falls shop. A box – the field measure for wild blueberries – contains about 25 pounds of fruit.

A hand harvester using the traditional short-handled rake can bring in 40 to 100 boxes a day, he said. Hand harvesters earn about $2.50 to $3 a box.

Good blueberry land produces somewhere between 3,500 to 5,500 pounds per acre, or 140 to 220 boxes, so a grower with 10 acres of berries could be paying up to $6,600 each year for harvesting.

Emerson said he is selling his harvester for $9,264. If cared for properly, the machine should last a lifetime, he said.

He expects to produce enough of the harvesters this year to supply 12 growers and already has deposits and a waiting list for next year, he said.

Sanford Kelley of Jonesboro is one of the growers who will take delivery of an Emerson harvester this year.

Kelley said most growers were paid only 25 cents a pound for their berries last year and had to pay rakers 12 to 13 cents a pound to bring them off the field.

“Harvesting is one of our major costs and this is a machine you can run yourself,” Kelley said.

Kelley is a member of the Sunrise County Wild Blueberry Association – an 8-year-old cooperative that freezes fresh blueberries in pint-sized containers.

Packed in see-through containers for the home consumer and sold in supermarkets in the Northeast and northern New York state, Maine Select Wild Blueberries are a premium product that sells for $2.49 to $2.59 a pint, Kelley said.

The select berries have to be picked very carefully and Kelley said a prototype of Emerson’s machine, which was tested during last year’s harvest, showed it could harvest a quality berry.

Emerson said he’s been building blueberry equipment – winnowing machines, mowers and more recently, fresh-pack processing lines – for 25 years.

For the last 10 years, his growers have been “desperate” for a picking machine, he said.

But developing a new piece of machinery takes a major investment of both time and money, so Emerson said he applied for a grant from the Maine Technology Institute.

MTI is a nonprofit organization created by the Maine Legislature in 1999 to promote and support research and development activity leading to new commercial products.

To his surprise, Emerson was awarded a $90,000 grant from MTI in June 2001.

The money – which Emerson receives in increments as he finishes each phase of developing the machine – requires matching funds, which include the value of Emerson’s work time on the project.

MTI technology specialist Joe Migliaccio said the grant funds are distributed if and when critical milestones are reached – because the projects MTI funds are experimental and some are not ultimately successful. That is why the Legislature created MTI – to fill a funding void for projects that are too risky for traditional financing, he said.

Migliaccio said MTI receives its money as a direct appropriation from the Maine Department of Tourism and Economic Development. As of the end of 2002, MTI had awarded $13.6 million to 280 companies and those awards were matched by nearly $22 million in commitments from the recipients, he said.

Emerson said the grant funds allowed him to experiment – trying a part and then putting it aside if it didn’t work.

The cost of materials is skyrocketing, Emerson said, gesturing to a package containing 500 pounds of sprockets.

“That cost me $140 last year, and this year, with the shipping, it was $250,” he said.

Emerson said the next step is to get the patent for the machine and begin producing them for this year’s harvest. He expects it will take him two months just to make the parts.

Once Emerson constructs the harvesters, they’ll last a very long time, predicts Cecil Rockwell, an Addison blueberry grower.

“I’ve had one of his mowers for 12 years,” Rockwell said. “They’re built rugged and they’re built good.”