BRUNSWICK — Swedish-based Mölnlycke Health Care has secured $ 14.2 million in funding for a 79,000- square- foot research and production facility at Brunswick Landing.
With that funding in place, the medical supplies producer is on track to hire approximately 80 employees for the site when the building is complete, according to Jim Detert, site director of Wiscasset- based Rynel, a fully owned subsidiary of Mölnlycke.
A $10.2 million loan from Bangor Savings Bank to the Mid Coast Regional Redevelopment Authority (MRRA), combined with $4 million in federal New Market Tax Credits through Wiscasset-based CEI Capital Management of Maine, completed the financing for Mölnlycke, Steve Levesque, MRRA’s executive director, told The Times Record on Wednesday. MRRA is tasked with managing civilian redevelopment of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, which closed in May 2011.
Rynel’s existing facility in Wiscasset, with 70 employees, manufactures medical foam that is currently shipped to Finland to be processed at Mölnlycke plants. Detert said that when the Brunswick facility is complete, that foam will be trucked down Route 1 to Brunswick to be converted to the finished product.
He expects to begin hiring late this year for 70 to 85 high-level manufacturing, engineering and lab technician positions.
This morning, Detert praised the efforts of all involved, noting, “It really was a Maine effort.”
“MRRA has been excellent,” he said. “And this whole thing started with (the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development) helping us make a pitch to (Mölnlycke in) Sweden that the factory should be located here instead of Europe.”
Detert said the infrastructure and “amenities” at Brunswick Landing — housing possibilities, recreational facilities, etc. — as well as the proximity to Southern Maine Community College, were a deciding factor.
Mölnlycke is working with SMCC to design a training program to operate at the plant and the college, he said. The firm also hopes to work with Resilient Tier-V, a data security company already headquartered at Brunswick Landing.
At a ceremonial groundbreaking in June at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, Pierre Guyot, chief executive officer for Mölnlycke, said his company would reach $1.5 billion in sales by the end of 2011.
Kestrel
At that same June groundbreaking, Gov. Paul LePage said government needed to “streamline things, make it easy for (companies) to come here, and get out of the way.”
But the top executive for another company hoping to expand at Brunswick Landing said “bureaucracy” continues to impede its plans.
Alan Klapmeier, chief executive officer of Kestrel Aircraft Co., said Wednesday that no revenue source has yet been identified to help fill a $60 million gap in funding the company seeks to build a manufacturing plant that would produce parts for its new single-engine turboprop plane.
Klapmeier said he continues to discuss options with officials in nine other states, including Wisconsin, where the city of Superior’s redevelopment authority will hold a public hearing on Jan. 16 to consider offering Kestrel incentives to build a manufacturing plant originally envisioned for Brunswick Landing in their city instead.
In October, Klapmeier said he originally expected that plant — and the 300 to 600 jobs he expects to create in it — would be located in Maine, and perhaps Brunswick, where Kestrel has signed a 10-yearlease for part of Hangar 6.
But he and Levesque said CEI Capital Management of Maine told them in May that it could not allocate more than $20 million in New Market Tax Credits to the Kestrel project, leaving a gap of approximately $60 million. Klapmeier then confirmed that he was negotiating with officials in Berlin, N.H., to open a Kestrel facility near a new biomass plant there.
Klapmeier said Wednesday that he has secured an investor — an insurance company he declined to name — ready to invest $35 million in Kestrel through the New Market Tax Credits, as soon as an entity is able to allocate them. CEI is the only entity in the state approved to do so.
MRRA applied to become an “allocatee” of $70 million in New Market Tax Credits, and Levesque said in October that if MRRA is approved, Kestrel would be its first project. However, Levesque confirmed Wednesday that he doesn’t expect to hear until February whether MRRA’s application was approved.
Other funding sources in that plan also remain in flux, according to Klapmeier — pieces that other states say they can work out for Kestrel.
Klapmeier told The Times Record on Wednesday that he continues to work with Maine officials. He said he met in December with Gov. Paul Le- Page, Economic and Community Development Commissioner George Gervais, Levesque and a representative of Cate Street Capital, which owns the Berlin, N.H., biomass plant as well as the paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.
Klapmeier praised the efforts of Levesque, Gervais and state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, but said, “They just don’t have the tools.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, no deal was in place.
Regardless of a decision on a Kestrel manufacturing facility, 25 existing jobs at Kestrel Aeroworks in Brunswick will remain here, Klapmeier said, as will engineering positions for Kestrel.
And he expects that local work force to grow in the double digits either way.
Klapmeier said he expects to hear any day that a deal for the manufacturing facility — and the hundreds of jobs that will go with it — is in place.
“I’ve characterized this as a race,” he said. “We’re not trying to compete one state against another. We’ve never asked for more (than Kestrel initially said it needed) … We have a business plan that we’ve shown everybody from the beginning. We need a certain amount of funding and we had hoped that Maine could do that. So far they haven’t been able to.”
Levesque said he’s working with Gervais and the Finance Authority of Maine, as well as an unnamed capital partner, to put the deal together.
“We’re working hard to try to make it happen in Maine,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can. We’re trying to pull out all the stops. It certainly was a setback for them when CEI decided it wasn’t going to do additional (installments) (of New Market Tax Credits) and we’re all scrambling to try to make up for that. We’re working hard to find alternatives so the company can grow those jobs here. Whatever decision we make, it’s got to make good business sense for the state. It’s got to be good for everybody, not just for Kestrel. I’m optimistic we’re going to be able to do this.”
More certain plans for Brunswick Landing came last week from The American Bureau of Shipping ( ABS) Maine Modeling Center, which announced it would expand its current 30-person work force by 16 in 2012.
All of the hires expected during 2012 will be from the local area.
The Houston-based organization helps establish qualifications for ship officers, classifies and registers merchant vessels, and applies safety standards to proposed ship designs through computer modeling similar to that done in Brunswick.
bbrogan@timesrecord.com
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