PORT ANGELES — The Port of Port Angeles has received preliminary approval of $2 million in federal funds to help build a Composite Recycling Technology Center at William R. Fairchild International Airport.
All that remains to finish financing the estimated $5.3 million project is approval of a pending $1 million Opportunity Fund grant from Clallam County.
County commissioners will hear the port’s presentation on the composites center Monday. They are expected to vote the following week, on May 12, whether to approve it despite reservations expressed by the executive director of the Economic Development Council about the project.
The U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration late last week sent the port a notice of preliminary selection for the grant to retrofit a shell building at 2220 W. 18th St.
Those funds will join $712,000 granted by Commerce for the project.
The federal funds aren’t in hand yet, said Jennifer States, the port’s director of business development.
“We have to provide some more paperwork and go through some more legal hoops,” she said. The port must prove it has commitments to match the federal funds.
The port already has allocated $190,000 for the shell’s interior design by Mount Vernon-based Carletti Architects.
The port and its other partners — the city of Port Angeles and Peninsula College — will fund the remainder with cash and in-kind contributions such as fee waivers and staff time.
If it receives the Opportunity Fund grant Tuesday, the port can shift some of the $1.5 million it has set aside for the center to developing business opportunities for composite manufacturers.
The 25,000-square-foot recycling center would be part of a composites campus anchored by Angeles Composites Technologies Inc. and Westport Shipyard Cabinet Shops at the airport on Port Angeles’ west side.
The center would house recycling machinery to process carbon-fiber scrap trimmed from aerospace components, plus classes and labs for Peninsula College’s Advanced Manufacturing-Composites Technology program, and startup space for potential manufacturers.
States has said she could not identify the companies under nondisclosure agreements but that 10 private firms could invest as much as $30 million in the center or build facilities on the 18 acres the port owns nearby.
The port’s projected business lines for the composites campus include products for agriculture, cycling and water sports.
The port has signed memorandums of understanding with firms that would supply the composite trimmings, States said.
And several recently retired composites technology employees of the Boeing Co. had inquired about moving to Port Angeles to join the recycling operation, she said.
Composites are lightweight, extremely strong materials consisting of carbon fibers imbedded in polymer resins. They typically are produced in sheets that are stamped or molded into components like aircraft wing struts that are cured with high heat.
Most manufacturers currently send their uncured scraps to landfills, States said. Some 2 million tons of composite waste is discarded each year in Washington.
Under the port’s proposal, companies in the Puget Sound region instead would spool their trimmed material like ribbon and store it in refrigerated semi-trailers parked at their factories.
The cold temperature would keep the composites from turning into hazardous waste.
The port would ship the trimmings to Port Angeles — initially about six truckloads a month — where it would be wound onto mandrels for reforming or be chopped or ground into bits suitable for making new sheets and, eventually, newly manufactured items.
The reprocessed material no longer would pose fume or flammability hazards, according to the port.
Including the cost of refrigerated shipping, the port could acquire composite material — worth $44 a pound in virgin form — for $10 a pound, said Geoff Wood of Bremerton, the port’s composites consultant, and turn the savings into family-wage paychecks.
States said the center would be the second composites-recycling facility in the nation and the first in the world to handle uncured material.
Eventually, however, the center might accept “end-of-life” composite objects such as old parts of airplanes or automobiles — such as the Airbus 350 and BMW’s i3 electric car — raising the possibility the port could handle such large items by developing a barge terminal on Port Angeles Harbor.
Construction of the composites recycling center could start in July and be complete by January.
The center’s immediate economic impact would be six new jobs, and the projected workforce would grow to 111 within five years at annual incomes ranging from $35,000 to $72,000, the port’s prospectus says.
It would pay nearly $700,000 a year in business taxes, according to the port.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
