Photo / Tim Greenway
Christopher Yeaton drills screw holes in aluminum trim for an OpBox at their facility in Woolwich.
Updated: 9 hours ago
Made in Maine: A Woolwich entrepreneur thinks out of the box
Photo / Tim Greenway
Ben Davis, owner of OpBox and Edura Marine, oversees the manufacturing of products used in pop-up shops, boatbuilding and a range of structures.
OpBox Maine has provided structures for pop-up booths for L.L.Bean, CLYNK and for a Rockefeller Center holiday display.
The “boxes,” which look like sleeker versions of shipping containers, come in different sizes and can be fitted out for a range of uses.
On a recent visit to the Woolwich site, where OpBox and its sister company Edura Marine occupy 15,000 square feet, workers were filling two significant orders.
For the recycling company CLYNK, 30-foot-long OpBoxes were being outfitted with automated collection windows, solar arrays and a corresponding circuit board. The CLYNK OpBoxes will be loaded onto a flatbed truck and shipped to Connecticut, New York and, eventually, California.
For Safe Harbor Marinas, at least 20 OpBoxes are being outfitted as merchandise shops that will be at waterside sites in marinas. (Safe Harbor, which has 138 marinas in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, was acquired in February by private equity firm Blackstone Infrastructure for $5.65 billion.)
OpBox and Edura Marine are led by Ben Davis, an entrepreneur with a vision for startups.
Photo / Tim Greenway
Thomas Rodda paints the interior of an OpBox for commercial use in Woolwich
A product with a range of uses
OpBoxes are built with a structural board made by its sister company Edura Marine, which is under the same roof in Woolwich. Combined, the companies have 20 employees.
Edura uses a recycled PET foam core, purchased from a company in Texas, that is then coated at the Woolwich site with a composite “skin,” which gives the 4-by-8-foot panels a rigidity and strength.
The Edura panels are used for the floor, walls and ceiling of the OpBoxes. But Davis envisions a range of possible uses, from boatbuilding to insulation for a range of buildings.
The panels are sound enough that structures don’t need standard framing. The product can be produced in different thicknesses for different uses.
And structures with the Edura set-up “are cheaper than bricks and mortar,” Davis says.
A boatbuilder in Steuben, A.R. Kennedy Customs, is testing out the Edura products in boats.
In the OpBox/Edura lobby, there’s a prototype dinghy built entirely of Edura panels, with joints sealed with epoxy.
With the possibilities for Edura and OpBox expanding, Davis says the companies are already outgrowing the Woolwich space.
“Edura is the heartbeat,” he says. “We’ll keep finding opportunities.”
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