LABOR

Hiring brisk for online retailer

Wayfair, the online home furnishings company, is on track to hire 1,000 workers for its operations opening this summer in Maine, a company executive said Thursday. Liz Graham, the company’s vice president for sales and service, said Wayfair is on track to open its sales and customer service operation at Brunswick Landing in Brunswick next month and another operation in Bangor in July. The company sells products ranging from furniture to flooring, lighting, plumbing and appliances. Graham said Wayfair is happy with the qualifications of the job candidates interviewed so far and has extended offers to many. She declined to provide specific information on how many employees have been hired or offered jobs, but said the pace is strong enough for the company’s plans. Read the story.

TRADE

Container shipments through port of Portland soar

The Port of Portland, which lost its container business in the wake of the Great Recession, is thriving once again, with container shipments up by more than 1,300 percent since 2011. The dramatic increase is largely attributable to Icelandic shipping company Eimskip, the port’s biggest cargo operator, which has grown its refrigerated cargo service by about 20 percent year over year since arriving in Portland in 2013. According to the Maine International Trade Center, container shipments through the port have soared from 7,400 metric tons in 2011 to 105,523 metric tons in 2015.The company, which employs 1,300 people worldwide and 10 in its Portland facility, was recognized by MITC as its Foreign Direct Investor for 2016. The president of the company said Eimskip is more than halfway to its goal of making weekly calls to Portland by 2020. Read the story.

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Team AR wins Microsoft award

A Maine company that developed an app to project public property boundaries into a smart phone camera took home the $120,000 BizSpark prize at the annual Top Gun pitch-off Tuesday. Nobleboro resident and entrepreneur Chuck Benton of Team AR won the $120,000 in-kind prize from Microsoft for its app using augmented reality technology. The event, hosted by the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development and the University of Maine, marked the graduation of the 2016 class of Top Gun entrepreneurs statewide. Top Gun is a program that combines mentoring with business development instruction. Six participants from the Bangor, Rockport and Portland Top Gun classes also competed in a pitch contest for a $10,000 cash prize sponsored by the Maine Technology Institute. The cash prize winner was Nadir Yildirim and Simin Khosravani of Revolution Research. The company uses technology to develop eco-friendly products for the construction and packaging industries made from locally supplied and bio-based materials. Read the story.

 FISHERIES

Ocean plan released to guide policy-making

A regional planning group issued a sweeping ecosystem-based ocean draft plan Wednesday to guide federal agencies in New England. The draft Northeast Ocean Plan has no regulatory power, but since it was developed by a group created by presidential order in 2010, the reams of science behind the plan will guide the federal agencies that help manage the coastline and oceans of New England, according to Betsy Nicholson, a member of the regional group that wrote the plan and regional director for coastal management for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The science is drawn from hundreds of data sources, and often packaged into easy-to-use interactive maps to understand the cumulative effect of disparate industries, such as looking at how marine mammal habitat intersects with regional shipping lanes or the location of marine industry job clusters or beach renourishment projects. This is the first regional ocean plan to come out of President Obama’s executive order. Read the story.

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DEFENSE

Vingtech in running for missile component contract

A Biddeford company is a finalist for a federal contract for up to $151.8 million for a sighting system for the Army’s newest class of grenade launchers. Vingtech, which opened in Biddeford in 2007, is in competition with Wilcox Industries Corp. of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to win the contract, which will be awarded in three phases through March 2022, according to Peter Rowland, a senior operations specialist with the organization managing the Army’s sighting system programs. This type of contract is often used in a developmental program because it spurs competition, Rowland said. The government plans to chose one of the finalists to receive the production portion of the contract after evaluating and testing out prototype designs. The sighting system will be used on the Heckler & Koch M320, a 40-millimeter, single-shot grenade launcher that can fire high explosive, armor piercing and illuminating rounds as well as non-lethal ones. Read the story.

REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION

New hotel gets OK from board

The Portland Planning Board has approved a new hotel proposed for the city’s eastern waterfront. The 150-room AC Hotel by Marriott at Fore, Hancock and Thames streets was approved unanimously by the six board members who voted Tuesday night. The six-story building will be near the former Portland Co. project, where city officials have established a historic district and plans are in the works for offices, retail space and housing. The new hotel, which was first proposed last fall, will cost an estimated $20 million and include a restaurant or about 4,000 square feet of retail space. Sixteen condominiums would be built on the top floor. Read the story.

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Midtown project closing nears

The embattled “midtown” mixed-use development in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood is one step closer to becoming a reality. A Portland official said the city is on track to sign over a 3.5-acre plot of city-owned land to midtown’s developer, Federated Cos., by the end of the month. “We are working towards that goal of closing (the sale) on May 31,” said Greg Mitchell, the city’s economic development director. On May 16, the Portland City Council approved three amendments to the purchase and sale agreement that the Florida-based developer said would allow it to move forward. Read the story.

TRANSPORTATION

Nova Scotia ferry service expected to start mid June

The Cat ferry, which will operate between Portland and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, this summer, was refloated Wednesday after more than a month in drydock for repairs and refitting, Bay Ferries Ltd. said. The company said the ship is about to exit the drydock in Charleston, South Carolina, and then undergo inspection, some final work and dock and sea trials. The schedule for its trip north from Charleston has not been set, the company said, but it’s expected to enter service on June 15. Read the story.

TECHNOLOGY

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Axiom wins Microsoft grant to connect remote residences

A Washington County Internet provider was among the recipients of technology grants from Microsoft, part of a new program launched by the software giant to help remote and economically challenged areas make connections to the Internet. Machias-based Axiom Technologies landed a $72,800 grant to provide Internet access to more than three dozen rural homes in Washington County, where it makes no economic sense to try to extend wired connections to the web. The Redmond, Washington-based company on Tuesday awarded 12 grants through its Affordable Access Initiative, part of its commitment to invest $1 billion to bring the power of cloud technology to serve the public good. The grant to Axiom Technologies was the only one in North America. Axiom plans to use the money to wirelessly connect about 40 buildings, mostly homes, to the Internet using “TV white space,” which utilizes a portion of the broadcast spectrum that had been used to broadcast over-the-air television before those transmissions were switched to digital high-definition signals. Read the story.

GENERAL BUSINESS

Sales, earnings up at Unum

Unum Group executives told shareholders at an annual meeting Thursday in Portland that the company is as strong as ever financially and well-positioned for industry changes to come. At his first annual meeting as Unum’s CEO, Richard McKenney told shareholders that he sees increasing demand for the company’s products and services, and that the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based, Unum, which has about 3,000 employees in Maine, is poised to capitalize on those opportunities and expand its reach. McKenney noted that over the past 10 years, Unum has provided a 147 percent return on investment to shareholders, compared with a 100 percent return for the S&P 500. He said Unum also greatly outperformed competitors in its industry, employee disability and life insurance. In 2015, Unum paid $6.8 billion in benefits and helped roughly 327,000 people return to work following a disability, he said. Sales and premiums each rose by 5 percent, while operating earnings per share grew for the 10th consecutive year. Read the story.


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