Manufacturers will be focus of $55M in new markets tax credits

COURTESY / SADDLEBACK Uche Osuji, managing director of Arctaris Impact Investors, spoke last year at the ribbon cutting for Saddleback Mountain. The ski resort got a boost at that time from CEI in the form of $1.49 million in Maine new markets tax credits.

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By Staff

CEI Capital Management in Brunswick said it was allocated $55 million in new markets tax credits to be used to help revitalize rural communities.

The organization said it would deploy the tax credits to manufacturers. The tax credits were provided through the U.S. Department of Treasury and are aimed at economic development projects that create quality jobs and build opportunity in low-income rural areas.

“This award allows us to bring critically needed private investment to deeply distressed rural areas, where access to capital is limited or non-existent,” said Betsy Biemann, CEO of Coastal Enterprises Inc., the Brunswick-based parent of CEI Capital Management. “We will work in partnership alongside community leaders to bring their vision of a revitalized, vibrant economy that centers good jobs and environmental sustainability to reality.”

The new allocation will be deployed primarily to manufacturing businesses, with a focus on companies that provide quality jobs for people with low incomes. In keeping with CEI’s good jobs framework, projects will provide living wage jobs with comprehensive benefits and training, directly addressing the poverty and lack of opportunity prevalent in rural communities with low incomes.

Nationwide, the U.S. Department of Treasury made allocations to 107 organizations for a total of over $5 billion in new markets tax credit awards.

CEI said that the deployment strategy prioritizes projects that create quality jobs accessible to workers with a high school diploma or less, providing a pathway to economic mobility for people with lower levels of formal education.

“This award is especially timely for the people living in rural places who have been left out of years of economic growth,” CEI Capital Management CEO Traci Vaine said.

Since 2004, CEI Capital Management has placed over $1.02 billion of capacity in 96 projects, triggering total private capital investment of over $2.8 billion in communities with low incomes and creating or preserving 11,937 jobs in primarily rural places.

The projects have supported the growth and economic viability of enterprises across industries spanning manufacturing, the arts, health care, agriculture, conservation, hospitality, technology and more, according to a news release.

Among the Maine projects CEI Capital Management helped finance is the St. Croix Tissue Inc. expansion in Baileyville that created a new, state-of-the art tissue paper manufacturing company next to the parent company, Woodland Pulp LLC. In 2021, CEI Capital Management LLC announced $1.49 million in Maine New Markets Capital Investment Tax Credit financing to support the ongoing revitalization of Saddleback Mountain Ski Resort.