In January, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced that it selected Maine’s Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub to receive around $22 million via a new Tech Hubs implementation grant. The award was one of six announced that day, with the latest funding round totaling around $210 million. In the press release, the EDA committed to working with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to connect each awardee with resources and support, through funds sourced from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) appropriations for fiscal year 2025.
The Tech Hubs Program, or the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs Program, traces its origins to the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which allocated $10 billion to the program over five years. Its goal is to invest in regions with assets and resources with a specialization in particular technologies or industries that show that they have the potential to grow into global competitive hubs of innovation over the next decade. “The Tech Hubs Designees exemplify place-based economic development strategies at their best: combining federal resources with regional assets, expertise, and coalitions to implement transformational opportunities,” explained Alejandra Y. Castillo, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, in a press release.
Photo Courtesy Maine Forest Products Council
Ultimately, the Tech Hubs Program aims to enhance the country’s economic and national security by accelerating domestic technological production, speeding up vital industries’ growth, and creating American jobs. Furthermore, the EDA noted on its website that it will enable “those industries, companies, and the good jobs they create to start, grow, and remain in the United States. ”
As Cristina Killingsworth, former Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, added in the January press release, “We are so pleased that bipartisan support in Congress for the Tech Hubs Program will allow us to make even more impactful investments in the future of America’s economy and national competitiveness.”
Photo Courtesy Sappi North America
In October 2023, the Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub was announced as one of 31 Tech Hubs and 29 Tech Hubs Strategy Development Grant recipients, with the latter providing additional support for building a regional economic development strategy. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2023, Congress appropriated $504 million to get the program up and running for twelve hubs. That funding was distributed through a funding round announced in July 2024. Although Maine was not one of those awardees, it received a $500,000 Consortium Accelerator Award to continue its work and raise more capital.
Additionally, last December, the NDAA for fiscal year 2025 appropriated up to $500 million for the program. With $220 million currently accessible by the Department of Commerce, that leaves an additional $280 million to be allocated in the future. Between the 2024 and 2025 selections, over $700 million in implementation funding has now been awarded to 18 hubs across 21 states, with over $1 billion in total financing spanning the past three fiscal years.
Photo Courtesy Hancock Lumber Company
The EDA expects Maine’s Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub to become a global leader. Led by the Maine Technology Institute, the hub focuses on sustainable wood biomass polymers. It sources biological building blocks from forests and uses them to create more sustainable products. The result is a stronger domestic supply chain with less reliance on plastic, fewer toxic chemicals, and more carbon sequestration.
The hub will use the recent $22 million grant for two projects. First, it will use its technological innovations, resources, and partnerships to make its technology competitive in markets around the world. The hub will become the organizing body for the consortium, executing successful strategies and engaging meaningfully with communities as part of that journey. Second, it will speed up the pace of its innovations by deepening and enhancing its feedstock, application, and technology pipelines and applying new commercialization and manufacturing techniques, thereby eliminating risk from its products.
The tech hub has more than 70 partners collaborating on this effort, with more than $352 million in commitments from the private sector and more than $277 million from outside the private sector, totaling nearly $630 million. They include the Maine Forest Products Council, the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Department of Labor, the Maine Venture Fund, the Manufacturers Association of Maine, and the Office of Governor Janet T. Mills. Educational institutions also offer resources, ranging from workforce training and credential programs to assistance in scaling up research and development. These institutions include the Maine Community College System; Northeastern University’s Roux Institute, which the EDA says has the “most comprehensive forest bioproducts entrepreneurship ecosystem in the U.S.”; the University of Maine, which is home to the most nanocellulose researchers in the country. The University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center is also responsible for the first 3D-printed house to be produced with recycled forest products.
Photo Courtesy Wood Design & Building
Maine makes sense to advance forest bioproducts. According to Senator Angus King, “As the most forested state in the country, Maine has always welcomed innovation that helps to strengthen the industry and grow the forest sector’s work. Maine’s forest products industry is instrumental to our state economy — as well as our identity.” In fact, Maine ranks first in the world as a supplier of cellulose nanofiber. Plus, the state’s wood supply chain, consisting of 13 million tons of sustainably harvested timber per year, employs more than 30,000 workers, and it is home to the biggest contiguous, privately-owned working forest in the country at 16.3 million acres. After beginning construction on $1 billion in manufacturing facilities in 2022, the state estimates its forest economy at $8.5 billion.
Photo Courtesy Forest Opportunity Roadmap Maine
A delegation of lawmakers, including Senator Susan Collins (R), supported the grant. In 2024, they wrote a letter to the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development voicing their support for their state’s hub to receive a Tech Hubs grant. Senator Collins even followed up separately, reiterating her support.
As Governor Janet Mills expressed, “Maine companies are leading the way in manufacturing innovative and environmentally friendly products that are changing how the world builds homes and businesses, and packages products, and more – and in doing so, they’re writing the next great chapter of Maine’s storied forest products industry. This significant federal investment will help Maine cement its growing reputation as a global leader in the advanced manufacturing of forest bioproducts.”
By its tenth year, the Tech Hub expects to create 4,000 new jobs in the area, help 100 new companies successfully attract their first customer order or their first $500,000-plus investment, and achieve $10 billion in net new company revenues derived from forest bioproducts.
