Dive Brief:

• Canadian company Envirem Organics has announced that it will be opening its first U.S. facility in the town of Unity, ME, as reported by the Portland Press Herald.
• The company plans to invest $4 million in a 30,000-square-foot facility which will eventually employ about 30 people. This will include space for offices, warehousing and distribution. 
• Envirem specializes in creating a range of products from industrial and organic waste recycling such as compost, soil, mulch and other fertilizers.

Dive Insight:

Envirem currently manages more than 550,000 tons of material per year across nine facilities in Canada, which employ nearly 1,400 people. Among these facilities are six composting operations and an anaerobic digester. This expertise is seen as a potential boon for Maine's logging industry and the Kennebec Regional Development Authority worked with Envirem to help select a location. Envirem was drawn to the area because of its proximity to New England's lawn and garden markets as well as shipping lanes.

"Unity and the Kennebec Valley region of Maine checked all the boxes for our first expansion into America," Bob Kiely, president and general manager of Envirem, said in a press release. "It provides the marketplace advantages we desire in terms of workforce, location and infrastructure and the quality of life we want for our employees."

Finding ways to make logging more profitable by fully utilizing all of the organic material looks to be good for all involved. As seen in California, some western states have struggled with a lack of processing capacity for the large amounts of trees burned in wildfires. New biomass conversion technology, such as the method used by Renmatix which recently drew a big investment from Bill Gates, also has potential to expand options in this sector.