When Profile Composites CEO Geoff Wood announced last month his intent to locate R&D and manufacturing operations in Kitsap County, it signaled some important breakthroughs for economic development on the Kitsap Peninsula:
Wood’s decision to locate here is largely due to a strategic partner relationship with another company with a Kitsap presence you also may not have heard about — the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS). Profile Composites (based in Sidney, B.C.), NCMS (with headquarters in Michigan), and the Ohio company — A&P Technology — have collaborated on projects in the past and plan to do more together.
NCMS’s Mike Fancher put it all in motion. He leads the Bremerton office of the NCMS, a national non-profit corporation with extensive experience organizing companies and developing/deploying advanced technologies. Much of their experience has been gained in the defense industry. Not coincidentally, A&P Technology is a contractor to both Boeing and Bell Helicopters, and Profile Composites has collaborated on projects. It made sense that they would want geographic proximity for future work.
Companies such as Profile Composites, A&P Technology and NCMS bring us more than initial jobs and investment, although we are certainly hungry for those. Wood has articulated on several occasions the opportunity to grow the advanced materials industry in Washington, and his choice to locate in Kitsap has the potential to make us a destination for other companies in this cluster.
If it continues on its current course, it will bring international reach. A major carbon fiber supplier, Toray Composites is located in neighboring Pierce County and is already a supplier to Profile. Toray’s parent company is headquartered in Japan; Profile Composites in headquartered in British Columbia. Profile’s initial production will be assistive devises developed by Side Stix, another British Columbia company. Last spring, Governor Gregoire participated in an announcement in Moses Lake where Germany’s BMW and SGL Carbon Fibers will establish a $100 million carbon fiber manufacturing plant expected to employ 200. And Angeles Composite Technologies, Inc., an Alaska Native corporation, announced this fall it will expand in Port Angeles, adding 100 jobs.
Our next opportunities to advance this cluster in Kitsap will be in identifying and attracting more end-user companies of advanced materials such as Profile Composites, and/or companies that will utilize carbon fiber components in their own production. They will now have access to two critical operating needs: the material, and the ability to train a workforce that knows how to work with it.
Kitsap already has the industrial land (Port of Bremerton and private); workforce training (Olympic College, Olympic Workforce Development Council, Employment Security, Skookum), competitively priced power (PSE), access to global transportation and communications systems, and a highly desirable living environment. We also, perhaps to the surprise of many, have a state tax structure that is favorable to profitable companies and one that historically incented producers and users of advanced materials.
It will be our collective job to continuously improve and bundle these location and operating assets, and take the business case to the marketplace. Thanks to NCMS, Profile Composites and A&P Technology… Advantage Kitsap.
