Maine Startups Insider reports on UMaine Business Challenge winners
Maine Startups Insider reported [Re]Produce, a company that wants to turn Maine farmers’ surplus into high-end locally sourced frozen food, won the sixth annual UMaine Business Challenge. Anita van Dam and Grace Burchard, both students at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, took home the first-place $5,000 cash award, which van Dam said the pair will use to help launch the company in Portland this fall. Five teams of college entrepreneurs competed in the finals of the UMaine Business Challenge, which is open to student entrepreneurs from any Maine college or university, according to the article. Second place, along with a $1,000 cash award, went to a group of three UMaine students — Bradley Shepherd, William McEnery and Devin Shepherd — for their video game company, Boreal Games. Benjamin Koehler, a senior at UMaine studying mechanical engineering, won the Technology Award, which also comes with $5,000, for a product he developed called the Comfort Appliance, which is able to draw heat off of a wood stove, and store it in a portable, insulated box that can then be carried to another room to provide warmth to an otherwise unheated space, the article states. Mainebiz and the Bangor Daily News also published reports on [Re]Produce.