Promoting Alaska-made products: nurturing commercial connections.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: MANUFACTURING - Northern Reclamation Services LLC - Company overview

Manufacturer Doug Glenn may seem to have an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. For him, this quality has been a key to business growth, along with his aviation know-how and a lot of long, hard work over many, many years.

Glenn, founder of Northern Reclamation Services LLC in Palmer, is working on a promising process using hay for straw wattles in erosion-control blanketing materials. He expects revenues this year of half a million. While his story is unique, Glenn is just one of many enterprising state residents who are making a living marketing and selling Alaska-made products.

Clearly he is a man who enjoys what he does. Through Northern Reclamation's parent company, Glenn Air, he also handles aerial reseeding, fertilizing and fish restocking operations.

In his new enterprise, started in 2007, he is promoting the use of Alaska-made wattles--nettings used in land reclamation projects or to keep sediments out of drainage systems--rather than having to ship wattles from Colorado or elsewhere. He envisions huge savings for construction and mining companies, a vision grounded in experience.

For almost a quarter of a century, Glenn has been doing cleanup and reclamation work for coal--and gold-mining companies. Early on, he brought in an old agricultural airplane to service equipment fuel needs at remote sites and "before I knew it, Usibelli was asking me to do some reseeding for them."

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About eight years ago, the State ramped up regulations governing sediment and started importing straw wattles from places like Colorado.

"We'd imported a lot of them, but the shipping costs were killing us until we started making them at home using Alaska products," he said. "Also, we're not importing any bugs and weeds from down south."

Glenn built a structure at the Palmer Industrial Park and envisions employing about 20 people full time. He has financed his business primarily through private banking and out of his own pockets, but it would likely take a loan to get the blanket machine up and running, he said in August.

MADE IN ALASKA

In Anchorage, Bill Webb, president and owner of Webb's Consulting and Management Services, is the program manager and agent for the State's Made in Alaska (MIA) program.

The Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development Office of Economic Development houses the MIA program, made public in 1986 by then Gov. Bill Sheffield. It promotes the purchase of products...