Maine dairy, grain business share $206K in USDA funds
Atlantic Corp. in Waterville and Northern Spent Grains in Yarmouth have been awarded a total of $206,000 to advance food science and nutrition through early stage research and development projects.
The funding was awarded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Small Business Innovation Research program, according to a news release.
“Small businesses are the backbone of Maine’s economy, and helping them to reach their growth potential strengthens our communities and creates new employment opportunities, particularly in rural areas of our state,” U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King said in a joint statement.
The funding was allocated as follows:
• Atlantic Corp. was awarded $106,000 to develop a dairy manufacturing and processing solutions tool for farms and value-added producers.
Atlantic helps smaller businesses identify new markets and navigate food safety-and-security regulations. It provides consulting services and business planning tools for economic research, project development, implementation and evaluation services.
• Northern Spent Grains was awarded $100,000 to produce low-calorie, high-protein snacks from brewers’ spent grains.
The company was founded in 2018 by Toby Ahrens, a program director at FocusMaine, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Northern Spent Grains was founded for the purpose of creating value-added products from brewers’ leftover grain. It is working with breweries throughout Maine to dry, mill and process brewers’ spent grain flours into value-added products for food and feed markets.
The Small Business Innovation Research program encourages the growth of domestic small businesses by offering competitively awarded grants to support high-quality research related to important scientific problems and opportunities in agriculture. The small business ventures are recognized as having the potential for larger scale commercialization as well as benefits to the community at large.
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