Greenville grants lease to tech firm

GREENVILLE – The Board of Selectmen granted a 12-month lease to Pepin Associates on Wednesday for the high-tech firm’s use of about 3,000 square feet in the Greenville Business Incubator.

The vote, which came after an executive session held at the end of a lengthy selectmen’s meeting, will mean the 10,000-square-foot incubator is filled.

In addition to the lease to Pepin Associates that begins next month, space in the incubator is leased to Maine House Furniture, which specializes in handmade furniture; and to Greenville Steam Co., which uses the office space to meet with potential buyers, according to Town Manager John Simko.

Simko said town officials are pleased to help Pepin Associates, which focuses on advanced composite structures for aircraft. He said the company offers higher-than-average wages and has the potential for job growth in the future.

“This [the incubator] gives us a tool to help a company when otherwise we wouldn’t have that tool,” Simko said Friday. “By all appearances, this is a very good fit.” He said the company would pay rent and the utilities.

John Pepin, owner of Pepin Associates, said Friday his firm is working on a naval research program, the objective of which is to develop his registered trademark DiscoTex, a fabric for composite structures for naval aircraft and rotorcraft.

“We’re pretty busy with the development of DiscoTex and getting it to the level where it’s a real product,” Pepin said. The product is being evaluated by the U.S. Navy for repair applications on the F18 Hornet, and by Boeing for some parts on the V22 Osprey.

Pepin said the incubator space would be used to set up an autoclave, a machine that provides temperature and pressure to composite laminates that are made for aircraft structures. He said he had the opportunity to purchase the machine from a Los Angeles owner, but had no place to set it up in his Greenville shop. Rather than store the machine, it made sense to use space available in the incubator, he noted.

“Having that incubator space there was really important to us at this time,” Pepin said.

He explained that the company is in transition between testing and development and manufacturing.

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