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Wood
works
Bangor Daily News
July 27, 2002
Life's moments — from the simplest pleasures to the
most trying experiences — usually involve a multimillion
dollar company that's hidden among the trees in central
Maine. Eat a Popsicle or Haagen-Dazs ice-cream bar.
Stir
coffee or skewer chicken for kabobs.
Open
wide and say "aahh."
Wave
a flag. Test a letter for anthrax.
Hardwood
Products Co. of Guilford is there every time.
For
more than 80 years, the company has made billions upon
billions of ice cream sticks, coffee stirrers, flagpoles,
medical swabs and tongue depressors, the kind of omnipresent
tools usually nobody ever thinks about.
International
pharmaceutical giants and everyday entrepreneurs seek
out Hardwood Products to get the parts they need to
complete their merchandise lines. It can be a long drive
to Guilford, but product developers from corporations
across the country are willing to endure the bumpy,
broken two-lane roads to get to Hardwood Products' facilities.
There
are two sides to Hardwood Products' core business, according
to James Cartwright, one of 12 third-generation owner-partners.
The fun side churns out the wooden items used during
life's more pleasurable moments, such as ice cream sticks
and flagpoles, and the more serious side spits out medical
products used when life is uncomfortable. The medical
products include swabs to test for strep throat, cervical
scrapers to conduct Pap smears, and numerous other swabs.
Since
1919, the white birch grown in Maine's woods has been
the soul of the company, which employs 310 people. From
each specially selected tree comes not only the company's
product lines, but also the electricity that fuels the
entire manufacturing operation. Any excess wood chips
from the manufacturing process fuel generators that
power not only the facilities at Hardwood Products,
but the Guilford of Maine textile plant down the street
as well, Cartwright said.
In
spite of the word "hardwood" in the company's name,
other materials such as plastic, Dacron, cotton and
aluminum also are used. Hardwood Products, too, hopes
to dramatically boost sales with a new patented bubblelike
closure and tube made of plastic with a foam swab attachment.
The idea for this self-saturating swab was not a company
original.
A
couple of years ago, a fisherman from New Hampshire
traveling those same bumpy roads en route to Moosehead
Lake stopped at Hardwood Products with a crude model
of the self-saturating swab. At the end of a small tube
that would be filled with liquid was a patented closure
that pops open when the tube is squeezed. The liquid
then saturates a foam tip. The fisherman wanted to make
it easier for nurses to prep patients, eliminating the
need to take a swab and then dab solution on it.
Timothy
Templet, vice president of sales and an owner-partner,
said Hardwood Products worked with the fisherman to
streamline the product and subsequently retained exclusive
rights to use the patented tube closure, called a Popule.
Now the man works on wooden boats while collecting royalty
checks and Hardwood Products markets the self-saturating
swabs to pharmaceutical and other companies.
And
several businesses have traveled to Guilford just to
squeeze and pop the newly created self-saturating swabs,
and to consider whether the simple technology can be
incorporated into their merchandise lines. For two major,
unnamed companies, the answer was "yes," and both are
close to signing multimillion-dollar deals with Hardwood
Products.
The
self-saturating swabs already have brought the company
national recognition. In the last year, Hardwood Products
shared a national DuPont Award with Purdue-Frederick
pharmaceuticals for the creation of an iodine-containing
self-saturating swab that is used on patients prior
to surgery.
Also,
two months ago, Hardwood Products received the Exporter
of the Year award from the Maine International Trade
Center. The company's annual sales top $23 million,
up 5 percent each year for the last couple of years.
At least 5 percent of gross sales this year are exports
to 42 countries, double the foreign sales from the previous
year.
Separate
of the two pending contracts, Hardwood Products also
is participating in the development of a rapid anthrax
diagnostic kit. That project was something Templet initially
did not want to discuss during a recent interview, citing
respect for the privacy of the kit's primary manufacturer,
Osborne Scientific in Arizona. But then he acknowledged
that in medical communities, people know that Osborne
Scientific is the only company approved by the U.S.
government to develop the rapid diagnostic test.
The
test is being developed for use in homes and businesses.
People will be able to take a swab developed by Hardwood
Products, rub it across a letter or package, and put
the swab into a tube filled with agents that can detect
the presence of anthrax, Templet said.
A
number of companies already sell anthrax detection tests,
but the swabs are packaged and sent to a lab for diagnosis,
thus delaying word of the results, he said.
Fierce
competition by other manufacturers of wood products,
particularly Chinese firms, forced Hardwood Products
two years ago to seriously consider whether to stop
production of ice cream sticks, cervical scrappers and
other items. It was a hard choice to even consider making,
Templet said, just like in the 1950s when the company
quit making the product that launched the business in
1919 — minted toothpicks.
But
Hardwood Products' customers made the decision for the
company's owners.
"We
learned in a very short period of time that there are
companies that won't buy from China," Templet said.
The
low-cost, China-made sticks were breaking during the
production of ice cream bars, he said, causing U.S.
manufacturers to experience tremendous amounts of down
time to fix their machines.
"To
some companies, the price variance wasn't worth the
down time," he said.
Walking
through the wood products manufacturing facilities,
Cartwright said he still is amazed, even after more
than 20 years in the business, by the sheer volumes
of merchandise that roll off the machines. It takes
a full year to make the number of ice cream sticks and
caramel apple sticks that are used in four months' time
during the summer.
"You'd
think there must be enough of these out in the world,"
said Cartwright, watching coffee stirrers get put into
boxes. "There never is."
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