British firm sets up in Bucksport

BUCKSPORT – A British manufacturing firm will be the newest business to move into the Bucktown Heritage Park, the town’s industrial park located off Route 46.

Waymouth Northumbria, a specialty engineering firm offering precision machining services, recently signed a purchase and sales agreement to buy an existing 2,500-square-foot building in the park. Operating as Rowenters LLC, the Bucksport facility will occupy the building previously owned by Osborne’s Plumbing and Heating, which was the first building constructed in the industrial park.

Osborne’s has since purchased another site in the park.

The facility is the first U.S.-based plant for Waymouth Northumbria, a 40-year-old business that has provided advanced production processes for its customers in England and in Europe. The company is expanding in order to serve what it hopes will be a growing market in North America.

“Our comprehensive manufacturing facilities allow us to work with virtually any kind of material, delivering components in a wide range of sizes and in quantities from one-off [one of a kind] to batch production,” said Roger Peters, the company’s president.

“Our Rowenters LLC facility in Bucksport will serve our North American customers’ supply-chain requirements,” he said.

Peters has worked for about 18 months with Maine & Co., a private, nonprofit corporation that provides services to companies locating to or growing in Maine, and with David Milan, the town’s economic development director, to put together the plan for the company’s new facility.

“This is a good fit,” Milan said Tuesday. “This is the kind of business we like to see locate in Bucksport. Roger Peters and his wife pride themselves in operating a family oriented business, and Roger has an education background that drives him to help young people make a life for themselves without having to leave the state.”

Initially, the company will use the Bucksport facility as a warehouse to store products made at the company’s plant in England. The company already has hired a North American sales representative from the area and likely will hire just a few employees to manage the warehouse and delivery operations.

Peters, however, has indicated the company will ship machines to the Bucksport plant and eventually base its production operations for North America there. The number of employees will be determined to meet the demand in the U.S. and in Canada.

Almost all of those employees will be hired locally, according to Milan. The only staff from England will likely be Peters himself, who is expected to make frequent trips to Bucksport as the facility develops.

The company is waiting to close on the property, and warehousing operations are expected to begin sometime in June.

rhewitt@bangordailynews.net

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