Senator Collins Visits Global Secure Shipping in Old Town
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Old Town, ME — This afternoon, U.S. Senator Susan Collins visited Global Secure Shipping (GSS) to tour the new facility and meet with employees, leadership, and members from partner organizations. During her visit, Senator Collins provided remarks and participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony for GSS’s new shipping container and facility. The event was attended by GSS employees and representatives from the University of Maine (UMaine), Newport Manufacturing, Maine Trailer, Alexander’s Welding, and PENCO Contractors.
GSS’s patented, durable and cost-effective technologies enable government and commercial companies to fight theft and tampering by transnational criminal organizations and minimize loss of real and intellectual property.
“Global Secure Shipping’s new manufacturing facility and the new generation of state-of-the-art containers produced here replace luck with innovation, technology, and commitment,” said Senator Collins. “GSS is helping to keep our seaports safe, while also making that important leap from R&D to manufacturing, which will help to create new industries and jobs in Maine.”
“One year ago, Global Secure Shipping was a new startup with a single employee, and the building we now occupy in Old Town had been unused since 2012. As we begin delivery of our first Secure Shipping Containers under our DoD contract, we have 26 full time employees, and are completing the renovations to our 17,500 square foot state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. Senator Collins’ consistent support of composites research at the University of Maine, Secure Shipping Container R&D, and Maine businesses has brought us where we are today,” said Robert Lindyberg, PhD, PE, CEO of Global Secure Shipping.
GSS was founded in 2018 as a spinoff company from UMaine to commercialize the hybrid composite secure shipping container developed by UMaine with Department of Homeland Security funding to meet port security requirements in the Safe Port Act of 2006, a law Senator Collins championed. As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Collins helped secure the funding that allowed UMaine to research and develop this innovate technology, as well as the Department of Homeland Security funding that led to the $3.9 million contract that was recently awarded to GSS to scale up production.
Since late 2019, GSS has rehabilitated a long-vacant warehouse in Old Town into a new 17,500 sf manufacturing facility; hired a manufacturing, engineering and administrative workforce of 25; and moved forward to establish manufacturing capacity to produce 1,000-3,000 secure hybrid composite shipping containers per year by 2022.
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