A financially troubled six-month-old waste plant in Hampden, Maine is seeking to borrow $10 million for a series of upgrades.

Since its opening in November, the Coastal Resources of Maine (CRM) plant has struggled to generate revenue. The plant has not yet received the state permits required to sell the products it makes from the waste it receives — plastic fuel briquettes and cellulose pulp.

Consequently, CRM has had to pay fees of send those products to landfills rather than generating revenue from selling them.

The upgrades that CRM wants to make include improvements to its machinery to better handle the waste it takes in, as well as increasing its stock of maintenance supplies and hiring more workers. The plant currently employs 52 people.

A group representing 115 communities that send their waste to CRM recently loaned $1.5 million to the facility for improvements.

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