Biomass project topic of meeting Investors head to Millinocket

MILLINOCKET – The Town Council will meet Monday with investors hoping to build a 17-megawatt biomass boiler cogeneration plant worth approximately $50 million in the Huber Industrial Park, officials said Thursday.

Jerry Tudan, owner of Peregrine Technologies, will be shepherding the investors to a meeting at noon at the Katahdin Business and Conference Center, 70 Spring St., he said.

“The investors are coming to the final rounds of [their inquiry] to ensure that there is a community that wants us,” Tudan said.

His project is at least the second in which investors in fledgling power technologies were in the late stages of scouting Millinocket or the Katahdin region as possible sites.

Investors looking to build a $45 million biorefinery that would turn trees into fuel to power electrical turbines had Millinocket among their top three potential locations, but as of last month had put their plans on hold pending a financial re-examination.

Neither Tudan nor Town Council members interviewed this week wanted to speak in specifics about the business plan for the cogeneration plant, preferring to wait until Monday’s meeting to hear from the investors, but all said that the project could be a boon to Millinocket, creating at least 30 jobs and other business opportunities.

“This has been a project in the making for a number of years. I can’t wait to see it come to fruition,” said Town Councilor Bruce McLean, who, as executive director of the Millinocket Area Growth & Investment Council, has been working with Tudan and others for about three years.

“I am looking forward to meeting with the principals involved,” Town Manager Eugene Conlogue said.

Tudan said the project strongly resembles, but on a much larger scale, what he and businessman Dick Day had been working on for more than three years and hoped to build in Medway.

That plan envisioned a wood-chip mill, greenhouse and other small businesses all powered by and helping power a biomass boiler, which itself uses wood wastes to create electricity.

The core of the project appears to be the boiler, which would likely be hooked into the Bangor Hydro electricity transmission lines and sell power there or to the New England power grid, Tudan said.

The boiler operations would likely employ about 30 people, with the number of additional workers dependent upon the other businesses that come in with the project, he said.

“If ultimately the ancillaries come into the project, it could make for many, many jobs,” Tudan said.