EASTPORT, Maine — The New England Salt Co. of Winterport is expanding its operations Down East in hopes of supplying road salt next winter to municipalities here, in northern Maine and in the maritime provinces of Canada.
New England Salt President Steve Clisham said this week that the company signed an agreement “a couple weeks ago” with Federal Marine Terminals, which runs the port for the Eastport Port Authority.
Clisham said the company will know by midsummer what new municipalities it will be serving because local governments typically solicit bids for road salt from May to July.
“We want to concentrate more on the Down East area and northern Maine,” he said.
The company already provides salt to an estimated 100 to 150 municipalities, he said.
Clisham declined to say what the company’s revenues are but said he hopes the expansion can add 15 to 20 percent to the bottom line.
New England Salt will continue to import salt from South America and Morocco. Last year, his firm imported 85,000 tons of salt through Searsport, Clisham said.
The expansion won’t change the company’s operation in Searsport in any way, he said. He also does not anticipate any problems selling salt over the border in Canada.
Clisham said New England Salt has two full-time employees. Other employees are moved from Clisham’s other companies — Clisham Construction and Maine Materials Inc. — as needed. For instance, Clisham Construction workers will continue to deliver salt to customers.
New England Salt considered expanding into Eastport before, but it instead ended up investing last year in additional storage space near Searsport, he said.
William Massow, the company’s vice president of operations, previously said that the closing of the PotashCorp salt mine near Sussex, New Brunswick, that was announced in January was important, but not the only reason behind New England Salt’s expansion to Eastport.
New England Salt has been “toying with the idea” of expansion for a year and a half, he said.
Massow said the company chose Eastport because it is the deepest port on the eastern seaboard and it has a newly constructed conveyor system and scales.
“We are very pleased to have [New England Salt] come on board,” Chris Gardner, Eastport Port Authority executive director, said last week.
New England Salt’s presence will mean the new $10 million conveyor system, finished in 2013, will be put to use to unload ships carrying salt.
Clisham estimates the company will import its first shipment of salt through Eastport sometime this summer.