FocusMaine is awarding $89,685 to nine Maine aquaculture businesses through their new Propel Aquaculture Mini Grant Fund. This funding will support projects to enable business growth and job creation in this rapidly growing sector. Twenty-seven aquaculture businesses from seven counties submitted applications for this competitive grant program established by FocusMaine with funding from Maine’s Department of Marine Resources.

Grant funds will be used for a variety of shovel ready projects, from purchasing materials to enable expansion to consulting support for operations improvements. The program was designed to help Maine aquaculture businesses increase production capacity and capability to grow volume/sales in existing and new markets through innovative projects.

Among grant winners is TWIYO Inc, doing business as The World Is Your Oyster, of Wiscasset. The project it won $10,000 for is to build a second generation grow raft that partially incorporates TWIYO’s 3D, oyster-growing raft design.