Photo / Maureen Milliken
A view of Puritan Medical Products' PIttsfield site, in a building owned by Cianbro Corp. The Sebasticook River is in the foreground.
June 4, 2020
Trump to tout Puritan swab ramp-up, talk to commercial fishermen during visit
Photo / Maureen Milliken
President Donald Trump will visit Puritan Medical Products in Guilford to celebrate its work manufacturing swabs for COVID-19 testing. The company is hiring, and planning to open a new production site in Pittsfield on July 1.
By Maureen Milliken
Where in Guilford will President Trump be?
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The rapid ramp-up in production by swab-maker Puritan Medical Products and issues related to Maine's commercial fishing will be the focus when President Donald Trump visits the state today for the first time since he was elected.
"More jobs in the factories of Maine," including in Guilford, Bangor, Bath and Brunswick, Peter Navarro, Trump's director of trade and manufacturing policy, said Thursday. "More opportunities for Maine commercial fishermen. That’s the message the president will be bringing to the great state of Maine.”
Trump will visit Puritan, in Guilford, to celebrate the increase in production and upcoming expansion of one of the world's leaders in medical swab manufacturing. While he's not visiting the company's new site in Pittsfield, Trump's celebration of the "greatest industrial undertaking of American companies since the Korean War" also includes Bath Iron Works, which is partnering on Puritan's production plant there, said Navarro.
Trump's visit also includes a closed-door, half-hour roundtable with commercial fishermen, where the topic is expected to be the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument, according to an administration official. Officials on a call with reporters Thursday wouldn't say who in Maine's fishing industry will participate in the discussion, but planned to release the names before it takes place.
The visit has been criticized by Gov. Janet Mills and Maine's two U.S. representatives, who have been concerned about security as the country and the state exploded with civil rights protests following the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Mills and U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District, also had questions about what Trump will bring to the commercial fishing conversation, where federal trade policies have hampered Maine's lobster industry for the last couple of years.
The visit is part of the president's tour of U.S. manufacturers that are making products to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump was expected to arrive at Bangor International Airport around 2 p.m., and will hold the roundtable upon his arrival. He will leave for Guilford, 44 miles to the west, once the meeting with fishermen is done.
The schedule released by the White House Friday morning said Trump's Marine One helicopter will land at Piscataquis Community High School at 3:10 p.m. He will take a motorcade to Puritan, a few blocks away at 31 School St., arriving at 3:25 p.m. He's expected to tour the factory, make remarks there, and return to Bangor in time for a 5:30 p.m. departure.
Marine national monument to be topic
While few details were offered Thursday, administration officials said Trump will likely talk to fishermen about fishing rights on the 5,000-square-mile Atlantic ocean national monument, which was designated by President Barack Obama in September 2016. Trump's itinerary, released by the White House Friday morning, says he will sign a proclamation.
The environmentally sensitive area, 12 nautical miles southeast of Cape Cod and about 80 miles south of Portland, is closed to commercial fishing except lobster and red crab harvesting. Those fishermen will have to cease by 2023. Several groups representing fishermen from New England and Mid-Atlantic states, as well as national seafood companies, filed a suit in 2016 asking the area be open to fishing. The suit was dismissed in December 2019.
The Trump administration in 2017 considered opening it to commercial fishing, a move that was opposed by environmental groups.
Mills and Golden, in separate statements Thursday, said they hope the fishing conversation includes federal trade policies that have hurt Maine's lobster industry. While the industry got $20.1 million in federal CARES Act funding, Mills and Golden said that damage from federal policies goes beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I am also hopeful that the president during his roundtable will hear the concerns of our commercial fishing industry, a vital part of our economy that is hurting right now," Mills said. "I am especially hopeful that he will address the impact that harmful federal trade policies have had on them over the course of the past several years and pledge support for greater federal financial assistance to aid them."
Golden said he's glad Trump will be holding the meeting, but "I have to ask: Where has he been for the past four years? Lobstermen have been raising the alarm with the White House for some time, and I have been asking for help from the Trump administration since I came to Congress.
"Last July, I led the Maine delegation to formally request that the president intervene to block his own administration’s proposed regulations on the lobster fishery," Golden said.
"Nearly a year later, we still haven’t received a response or seen any action against these harmful regulations. I genuinely hope the president commits the full power of the presidency to protecting Maine’s lobster industry, and I am ready to work with him — as I have been for some time now — if he will commit to taking action."
Celebrating business partnerships
The Puritan visit will tout the medical device manufacturer's ability to ramp up production from 10 million swabs a month to 20 million, and eventually 40 million, after a $75.7 million grant this spring tied to Trump's order that the plant increase manufacturing under the Defense Production Act.
Administration officials said Thursday that Trump is expected to champion "the administration’s success in harnessing and bolstering American manufacturing capabilities to create American-made medical supplies and medicine to respond to COVID-19.”
While the company's limited space in Guilford, as well as difficulty in hiring in sparsely populated Piscataquis County, made an increase in production difficult, Cianbro Corp. offered a largely unused 144,000-square foot warehouse in Pittsfield, 30 miles south of Guilford in Somerset County.
The expansion also includes 40 new swab-making machines, 30 of which are being made by Bath Iron Works, which is hiring 10 subcontractors to help with the work.
The building renovation by Cianbro was fast-tracked and expected to be ready by July 1.
Puritan Executive Vice President Timothy Templett told Mainebiz last month the company will be able to hire 100 to 130 more workers in Pittsfield in addition to the 20 or 30 it had already added to its workforce of 300 in Guilford.
Overall, Puritan makes more than 1,200 types of swabs and single-use sample collection devices for the medical, diagnostics, microbiology, forensics and other industries. It is the only company in the U.S. that makes the specialty long-handled swabs needed for COVID-19 testing. Another manufacturer of the swabs is in Italy.
The swabs are sold directly to the U.S. Department of Health and Human services under the Defense Production Act. Normally Puritan sells to medical distributors.
Puritan and its sister company Hardwood Products LLC are both under the Hardwood Manufacturing umbrella, which has a total 550 employees overall. Hardwood Manufacturing has been operating in Guilford since 1919, and is the largest employer in the county, which has a population of 17,000 and a median household income of $39,470.
Templet told Mainebiz last year that the location in Guilford made it hard to hire enough workers to do all the work that came the company's way. In February, he filed suit to dissolve the ownership structure and split from Hardwood.
He told the Bangor Daily News Thursday that the visit is welcome and Trump can expect a warm reception.
“I think that our people who have worked very, very hard this March, all of us, are honored that he is coming here and taking the time to come to Maine,” Templet said.
Photo / Maureen Milliken
Guilford will be the site of a visit by President Donald Trump, where he will tour Puritan Medical Products. The company is on School Street, where the church steeple is seen in the background of the photo.
State safety concerns
Mills, Golden and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine 1st District, all lauded the work Puritan has been doing in the COVID-19 response, but also said they were concerned about the challenges the visit presented to the state. Initially, in a phone call with Trump and the country's governors, Mills had asked him not to come. Pingree on Thursday made the same request.
Mills also asked that, since he is coming, Trump keep the safety of Maine's residents in mind during a volatile time that has including anti-racism protests across the country and the state.
“I am proud of the extraordinary Maine companies, like Puritan Medical Products, who have adapted to meet the unprecedented challenges of this pandemic and whose work is saving lives," Mills said. "They are worthy of our praise and to them I am grateful."
She added, “As the individual responsible for the health and safety of Maine people, including those who support and do not support the president, I again ask the president to check his inflammatory rhetoric at the door and abandon the divisive language that sows seeds of distrust among our people. I hope he will heed this call and appeal to the best in all people and lead us with courage and compassion through this difficult time."
Mills also urges the state's residents to "to exercise that fundamental right with respect and do so safely amid this deadly pandemic," whether they are turning out in support of Trump or are protesting his visit.
"Let us all remember during this time of high tension that, regardless of our various and differing political beliefs, we are all members of this Maine family. We all love our country, we all love our state, and we all want the best for both," she said.
Pingree released a video on social media Thursday asking Trump not to come. Saying the visit is "just one more way to divide us" as the nation grapples with a deadly pandemic, record unemployment, and widespread peaceful protests of police brutality and systemic racist, she added: "We do not need the president visiting the state of Maine."
A Mainebiz poll, one of a weekly series, seemed to show similar, but not unanimous, sentiments.
Among the 223 people who had responded to the survey by Friday morning, 56% said they didn't think Trump's visit was a good idea, calling the trip "a political stunt and a needless distraction from serious crises the U.S. faces"; 33% said the visit is "a good thing for Maine and a good acknowledgement of Maine business"; and 11% said that Trump's presence in Maine at this time was a security risk, and that Mills was rightly concerned.
Road closures, COVID-19 safety
The Piscataquis County Sheriff's Office has announced there is no parking on Water Street, which is Route 6, and the route from the high school to Puritan, a few blocks away at 31 School St., "so as many people can see the motorcade as possible."
Some protesters are planning to gather at the Bangor International Airport instead of traveling to Guilford, several news reports have said.
At Thursday's Maine CDC daily briefing, Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said that the same health and safety measures that have been in effect since the pandemic began a couple months ago will be in effect during today's presidential visit.
"Discussions are happening with appropriate officials," she said.
President Trump's Guilford Visit Map
President Donald Trump's helicoptor, Marine One, is expected to land at Piscataquis Community High School this afternoon, with a presidential motorcade to Puritan Medical Products to follow.
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