LIMESTONE, Maine — While the Maine Military Authority and Loring Industries are wrapping work this summer on a more than $20 million bus renovation project for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, according to Loring Development Authority President Carl Flora, it looks like projects are lining up to keep workers from both firms employed through the year.
Flora said during a May 2 meeting of the trustees of the Loring Development Authority that Loring Industries just “landed another contract with a bus manufacturer to do the exact same thing” as the MBTA project, providing employees with a steady flow of work.
While not privy to many of the details, Flora said later that contract is with “a coach bus manufacturer and involves refurbishing buses that are coming off lease or trade-ins,” and that new buses “will arrive as they are turned in.”
Loring officials also are working out the details of another potential Loring Industries contract that would involve working on howitzers.
“The issue [with the howitzer contract] is timing,” Flora said, “and there’s a fair amount of red tape with the Department of Defense that has to be defeated first.”
Trustee James Cote asked where MMA fits into these future contracts.
“The howitzer project is an MMA contract,” Flora said. “Maine Military will continue to have a presence. They’ll have some workers under contract with Loring Industries. The case may be that some of the workforce will eventually migrate from MMA to Loring Industries. The crystal ball is not 100 percent clear on how that’s going to shake out, but there will be a transition that will start this summer.”
When asked by a board member if any significant contracts are lined up for MMA, Flora said he is not aware of any.
In addition to the two aforementioned projects, Flora said there is even more potential for future contracts with Loring Industries, and that “a company from Florida” has been in contact with Loring officials regarding a possible “manufacturing program to build steel devices for the freight transit business.”
The LDA president also mentioned the possibility of Loring Industries signing onto contracts for renovating airfield ground equipment, truck chassis, disassembling aircrafts, and manufacturing food processing equipment.
While there appears to be plenty in store for workers on the former Loring Air Force Base, the possibility of bringing in an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul company is still up in the air.
An aviation repair firm, which Loring officials are still not able to name, began moving equipment to Limestone last summer and expressed an interest in setting up shop on the base. But Flora said on May 2 that the company has not given any specific details regarding finalization of the deal.
“The aircraft MRO company we dealt with last summer,” he said, eliciting some skeptical laughter from board members, “is still in touch with us. They’ve informed me that they’re in the process of lining up work, but they do not have a physical presence here except that they’ve relocated some of their equipment. Frankly, I don’t have a good sense of when, or how, that’s going to play out.”
