By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Local development officials traded business cards and PowerPoint presentations Thursday with a Canadian counterpart looking for businesses that could benefit from streamlined international shipping.

Rob McInnes, a development officer for the Canadian port of Halifax, met with representatives from the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council to see what the Twin Cities have to offer.

“I’ve heard good things about Lewiston-Auburn and I wanted to see for myself,” he said.

McInnes was in Maine looking for business expansion possibilities. He stopped in Bangor Wednesday and planned to visit Portland today.

Auburn and Portland were the main purposes of the trip, he said. He already works with the Portland Port Authority and is quite familiar with its operation.

“But I’m not aware of what goes on here,” McInnes said. “I wanted to make a visit to see for myself and to make some contacts – to see and be seen.”

Lucien Gosselin, president of the growth council, led the visitor on a quick tour that included stops at the Safe Handling warehouse and the intermodal freight facility in Auburn and the Wal-Mart’s distribution center in Lewiston.

The two ports already have some business in common, via the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad. The railroad connects Auburn to Ste. Rosalie, Quebec. The Canadian National railroad links to Halifax from there.

That link gives Auburn access to world markets. The city was granted Foreign Trade Zone status in October 2004, Gosselin said. That lets manufacturers have raw materials shipped to them duty-free. They can then manufacture their goods and ship them to international customers duty-free.

Many of those goods will end up going through Halifax, McInnes said.

“So it makes sense for us to see how we can utilize that relationship to the best extent possible,” he said.

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