PORT ANGELES — How’re you gonna bring ’em back to Port Angeles after you’ve found them in Paris?
That’s the question two Port of Port Angeles representatives must answer when they return next week from the JEC Composites Conference, a worldwide composite materials expo in the French capital.
Jennifer States and Geoff Wood flew Friday to Paris to tout the port’s planned carbon-fiber composites recycling center at William R. Fairchild International Airport — and to lure manufacturers here.
Who’s attending
States is the port’s director of business development. Wood is the port’s Bremerton-based composites consultant.
They are expected to return next Wednesday and report to port commissioners at their March 24 meeting.
The port’s plan is to open a Composite Recycling Technology Center, including space for Peninsula College’s composites classes, with $2 million in federal grants to finish a vacant building at the airport.
It would accept scrap carbon-fiber material from manufacturers such as Boeing that use the light, strong substance to build airplanes like the 787 Dreamliner.
By federal law, the port couldn’t recycle material for aerospace uses, but it could offer it to manufacturers of such items as bicycle frames, truck bed covers and computer cases.
Port officials attended the JEC Composites Conference in 2012 and 2013.
States said she expected this year’s expo, which started Tuesday and ends today, to attract 30,000 people from 1,200 companies from 94 countries.
The port will participate in a booth sponsored by Washington state.
States said last month the proposed recycling center had attracted international attention and that the JEC expo coordinator had invited the port to participate.
Port Commissioner Jim Hallett had considered attending the expo but decided not to go.
The tab for States and Wood was expected to total less than $20,000 after a side excursion to the British composites capital of Bristol was canceled.
Part of the trip will be to inspect recycling equipment the port hopes to install at the Fairchild center, which also could include space for a pilot composite-manufacturing enterprise, States said.
Late last month, port commissioners approved a $190,000 contract with Carletti Architects of Mount Vernon to design the interior of the 25,000-square-foot building.
If the port receives the $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration and matches it with its own funds and contributions from other government agencies, the recycling technology center could open in the fall.
Included in the matching funds could be $1 million from the Clallam County Opportunity Fund and money from the state Clean Energy Match Fund Program.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
