The Biden Administration has designated Maine's largest cities as one of the nation's thirty-one regional tech hubs. The Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub is comprised of the cities of Portland and Bangor, plus the Lewiston-Auburn and Augusta-Waterville metropolitan areas. Heather Johnson, the Commissioner for the Maine Department of Economic Community Development, says the designation aims to cement Maine as a global leader in the production of wood-extract substitutes for plastics and other fossil fuel-based materials.
"It's important to Maine for those to be replaced, at least in part by things that we can create like forest products. We've seen their ability to do that, but we need more research in order to continue to expand and grow that," Johnson says.
The $500,000 in initial planning grants will help the Maine hub apply for larger funding opportunities. The federal Tech Hubs program is designed to expand tech investment beyond cities such as Boston, New York and San Francisco.
