Woodworking firm looking to expand

PITTSFIELD – In the last decade, Maine has lost more manufacturing jobs than any other state, so it comes as a welcome surprise that a Massachusetts cedar product company is bucking the trend – not only is it expanding three of its Maine locations, but it is also looking ahead to bringing more of its corporate offices here.

Walpole Woodworkers Inc. was founded in 1933 in a Massachusetts farmhouse with a sawmill out back. The company moved to Maine in the 1940s when it ran out of local cedar.

Today the company has 14 retail stores and a substantial mail-order catalog business, all supplied by manufacturing facilities in Pittsfield, Chester and Detroit, Maine.

The company buys 10,000 cord of cedar trees each year at Chester, pumping money into the northern Maine economy. In Detroit and Pittsfield, the cedar is turned into high-end outdoor furniture, pergolas, small outbuildings, lamp posts, arbors and fences. Custom work is so precise that Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia uses Walpole to recreate original fences from the 1700s.

This week, the town of Pittsfield, assisted by Somerset Economic Development Director James Batey and consultants at Kennebec Valley Council of Governments, will submit a $400,000 Community Development Block grant that will allow Walpole to purchase a vacant 43,000-square-foot facility in the town’s Industrial Park and bring new equipment, technology and 40 new jobs to the area.

The company hopes this expansion will result in sales in the $60 million range within the next five years.

“I think this is just the beginning of more manufacturing coming back to our region and bringing jobs,” said Batey, who noted that the area for expansion in Pittsfield is part of a newly created Pine Tree Zone.

Walpole President Louis A. Maglio, 53, said Tuesday that an unsympathetic atmosphere regarding manufacturing in Massachusetts has prompted the opportunity for consolidation in Pittsfield.

Maglio said he also was having difficulty finding laborers.

“Frankly, it has been hard to find workers in Massachusetts that still want to work with their hands,” he said.

The jobs that Walpole will provide are specialty craftsmanship positions, he said.

“Here in Maine, we can work with good people to create good jobs,” the company president said. The company employs 86 people.

The expansion also will benefit the Chester facility, where the wood is milled into lumber. The number of jobs is expected to increase from 15 to 50. The Chester mill also creates mulch and biomass fuel.

Walpole also will expand into a former toothpick factory in Mattawamkeag, providing another half-dozen jobs.

The company has been consistently expanding in Maine for the past six years.

“This is a meat-and-potatoes company that does a lot of good work,” Maglio said.

Current employees are working 50 hours a week to keep up with orders.

“From the tree to the product, it is all done from scratch,” he said. “It is really like having five or six little businesses, but it is also the reason the company has been able to maintain quality.”

In 1998, a 24,000-square-foot building was erected in Detroit. When a fire destroyed several outbuildings two years later, part of the operation was moved to Pittsfield. Walpole purchased the former Dexter Shoe building in Industrial Park, along with a former tire warehouse. The tire shop is now a retail outlet, selling discontinued and overstocked items.

The company also purchased the former Maine X-Ray building, which is used for shipping and handling procedures.

Should the $400,000 grant be awarded in six to eight weeks, the company will buy its fourth building in the park, the former Sonoco warehouse, Maglio said. He said the company also will leverage private financing to add new technology and equipment to the building.

Maglio hopes to have the move completed by early fall. By that time, the company should have determined if recent marketing changes are paying off.

High-profile retail outlets were just opened in Virginia, New York and Rhode Island.

“These new stores will test this marketing strategy, and once the soundness is confirmed, additional expansion opportunities are numerous,” Maglio said. “Don’t think for a minute this will be the last of our expansions in this area.”