Maine Technology Institute celebrates 25 years of investments
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The Maine Technology Institute (MTI) is a unique public-private partnership whose core mission is to encourage, promote, stimulate, and support innovation and its transformation into new products, services, and companies. MTI offers grants, loans, equity investments, and services to businesses, organizations, and entrepreneurs to support Maine’s innovation economy.
As a key part of the state’s economic development strategy, MTI is a significant driver in expanding research and development to create new innovative ventures. Since its founding in 1999, MTI has distributed nearly $372 million via a variety of programs to more than 4,000 projects throughout the state of Maine. Here are a few examples of Maine companies we have recently supported.
For more information visit mainetechnology.org. Courtesy photos unless otherwise specified.
American Unagi
In 2014, Sara Rademaker tried her hand at raising a handful of baby eels in the basement of her Maine home. She had a strong background in aquaculture, including university studies and projects in Africa, and her home-grown elvers thrived. As has her company, American Unagi (Japanese for freshwater eel), which has grown to be the U.S.’s largest commercial eel farm. From the outset she wanted to give consumers a traceable, responsible alternative to imported eel products, strengthen the local economy and be a good steward of natural resources. To ensure its eels are safe and sustainably sourced, the company buys elvers from local licensed eel harvesters March–June, when the sea-born fish migrate into Maine’s freshwater rivers to mature, then raises them year-round in state-of-the-art recirculating water tanks, where they’re fed well and swim freely. Once grown, they’re supplied to domestic wholesalers, restaurants and retailers across the country.
Blue Ox Malthouse
In 2013, Joel Alex set out to realize a big dream: producing quality malt at a scale that would foster sustainable food systems and robust rural economic development. Since then, Blue Ox Malthouse has combined traditional methods and modern technology with great success, supplying malted grains for the Northeast’s brewing, distilling and baking industries, and recently opening a new, 20,000-square-foot facility. They use the ancient, labor-intensive technique of floor malting, spreading grain on floors and hand raking it till it’s germinated, but use automatic temperature and moisture control systems to scale the process. They feel they get a higher-quality malt this way than with a fully automated operation—and provide more good jobs for their community. This is one of their primary missions, along with sustainability and going as local as possible, from returning organic waste to the nutrient cycle to banking and sourcing equipment and supplies nearby.
Bookclubs
In 2011, Anna Ford, founder and CEO of Bookclubs, started a small book club with friends, but when it grew to thirty members, her time spent on interminable email chains and logistics ballooned too. Thanks to a serendipitous encounter with a computer programmer, Ford devised a solution to keep her book club going: a website to streamline the organizational tasks. Since its launch in 2019, Bookclubs’ platform has grown to over 100,000 clubs worldwide and helps its more than one million members connect and read together. The organizing software is available via website and app. Members can browse public book clubs, start their own, schedule meetings, facilitate discussions, and discover what to read next. Bookclubs has grown by leaps and bounds, but its original mission remains the same: to inspire meaningful connections and build community through books.
Marin Skincare
By the time she got to graduate school at the University of Maine, Amber Boutiette had been fighting a years-long battle with eczema, a debilitating, inflammatory skin condition affecting millions worldwide. But wholly unexpectedly, she found a solution through the research she and fellow student Patrick Breeding were conducting into the glycoproteins found in the circulatory fluid of lobsters, which not only help them combat disease, heal wounds and regenerate limbs, but can also soothe, nourish, and even repair the skin barrier. Encouraged by compelling laboratory data, the two created a glycoprotein-rich prototype cream—with remarkable results: in two weeks, Boutiette’s eczema was gone, and they knew they were onto something. Marin Skincare was born. The company works with a local lobster processor who sustainably and ethically sources the glycoproteins, which would otherwise go to waste, and people with conditions like psoriasis, or even browntail moth rashes, have found relief.
North Spore
With a mycological mission, North Spore aims to empower people to grow and harvest their own edible and medicinal mushrooms by providing the materials and know-how to ensure their success. Launched in 2014 by a trio of fungi-loving friends—a mycologist, an organic farmer and a photojournalist—North Spore started life as a modest mushroom farm. Fast forward a decade, and it has grown into the Northeast’s largest mushroom supply and cultivation e-commerce company, with over 70 employees (including multiple mycologists); a state-of-the-art in-house laboratory and culture bank; research farm; digital education center; and production facility, where they produce all their own mushroom spawn, sterile substrates, cultures and kits. Sustainability, collaboration, inclusion and innovation are North Spore’s watchwords, from the organic materials they source from local, like-minded companies to the scholarship and research programs they’ve established to support aspiring researchers, gardeners, farmers and others in their own mycological explorations.
This article appeared in the Winter 2024-25 edition of Green & Healthy Maine. Subscribe today!
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