MILLINOCKET – The water filtration sensor company that hopes to bring 40 jobs to the area by the end of next year will soon receive an infusion of start-up capital by way of a $250,000 Community Development Block Grant loan.

The town recently was approved for the CDBG loan it applied for on behalf of the Brims Ness Corp. Formerly housed in a Portland incubator area for new businesses, Brims Ness plans to become an anchor tenant at the business resource center being created by the Millinocket Area Growth Investment Council at Katahdin Paper’s engineering and research facility.

Brims Ness develops water filtration sensors for residential, municipal and industrial uses. The company’s patented technology uses tiny quartz crystals to detect unwanted or hazardous ions in liquid flows. The company is named after an area in Northern Scotland that’s believed to have one of the clearest natural water sources in the world.

With the move still in the planning stages, the company is working to nail down final amounts with a private source that will fund the majority of the startup, according to company President John Merrill. The company is excited to get the process moving and plans are under way to train a lab director next month to bring the lab portion of the Millinocket facility up and running in February, Merrill said.

“There’s a lot of pieces of the puzzle that have to come together,” Merrill said Tuesday. “It’s a question of how we get organized and do this.”

The Town Council already has approved a $50,000 business loan for the company, according to Town Manager Gene Conlogue. Under the loan agreement, the town will act as liaison between the state and the company to distribute the funds, Conlogue said.

“This has been one of the major hurdles with the project,” Conlogue said Tuesday of the application. “The state has cooperated greatly with the project.”

With the number of potential employees estimated to increase significantly within four to five years, the benefits of the company relocating to Millinocket stretch well into the existing area, Conlogue said. According to the agreement, the company will have two years to create 25 jobs, or one for every $10,000 of the loan.

“These jobs are a totally different industry from what we’ve had here previously,” Conlogue said. “We’re finally looking at legitimate diversification of our economic base with this company. That’s a goal we’ve had for years.”