Manufacturing

To anyone who might believe printing is a dying industry in a digital age, Kerry Stackpole says this: Look in your cupboard. "Imagine opening your kitchen cabinets and having no labels on the cans," said Stackpole, president of the Printing & Graphics Association MidAtlantic. "Imagine a world without print. " Despite the challenge that digital platforms and electronic media pose to traditional printing companies, printing remains the third-largest manufacturing employer in the state, the association says.

Suddenly, manufacturing is back -- at least on the campaign trail. But don't be fooled. The real issue isn't how to get manufacturing back. It's how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren't at all the same thing. Republicans have become born-again champions of American manufacturing, especially given crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the following week in Ohio. Mitt Romney says he'll "work to bring manufacturing back" to America by being tough on China.

A Canadian company is launching a food manufacturing operation on Maryland's Eastern Shore, the state announced Monday. Protenergy Natural Foods Corp., based in the Toronto area, has leased a building in Dorchester County that had been used by food manufacturer FoodSwing and acquired that company's equipment earlier this month, according to the state Department of Business and Economic Development. Protenergy, which is seeing more demand for its soups, broths, sauces and gravies, told the state that it expected to hire 100 people to work at the Cambridge site by 2016.

At the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, scientists are working on a database that will help drug makers decide which of 1,000 or so materials are safest and most effective to deliver specific medications. It's a project that could get a big boost from a grant up to $35 million to a collection of universities from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that aims to make the nation's drugs safer and less costly, and even produce more jobs, by improving the science of manufacturing.

Alger Zapf Jr., former president of the George H. Wahmann Manufacturing Co., died July 22 from complications of Alzheimer's disease at his home in Sarasota, Fla. The former North Baltimore resident was 86. Mr. Zapf was born and raised in Royal Oak, Mich., and graduated in 1942 from Dondero High School. He enlisted in the Army after high school, and part of his military training was at Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, where he met his future wife, Frances Virginia Wahmann.

More than 20 percent of my Baltimore factory's sales are exports, and we want more. We ship to 35 countries; however, that is not good enough. Developing new markets to sell our sheet metal fabrications, wire baskets, and wire forms to new markets will grow jobs in Baltimore and strengthen my company's base. That's why I accepted an invitation from Gov. Martin O'Malley to accompany him and other Maryland officials and business leaders to Asia in June. This trip was a startling eye opener for me. I came home shocked with how advanced our economic rivals are. My major observation is that we have some very tough, smart, aggressive competition.

It was just a matter of time before businesses began to push back against some of the worst behaviors of extreme couponers. Some retailers and manufacturers have revised their policies lately, restricting the number of coupons consumers can use to prevent them from stripping shelves bare or from paying little or nothing for baskets of groceries. Rite Aid, for example, changed its policy in May so savvy shoppers can no longer double up on buy-one-get-one-free coupons and not pay anything.

Baltimore manufacturer Wm. T. Burnett & Co. and a subsidiary have won a city bid to redevelop property on Wicomico Street in Southwest Baltimore to expand the company's operations, the Baltimore Development Corp. reported. The BDC will begin negotiations with the more than century-old firm, which makes polyurethane foam and nonwoven materials. Burnett, which has headquarters in the Carroll Camden Industrial Park on Bush Street, also occupies a warehouse that abuts the property to be redeveloped.

It's called Chesapeake Bay Candle. But for 17 years, all the products in the signature line of Annapolis-born and Rockville-based Pacific Trade International were made by cheaper labor in Asia. On Tuesday, the brand celebrates a sort of homecoming: the official opening of a new plant in Glen Burnie, where a workforce projected to grow to 100 will make the candles the company sells at Target, Kohl's and other retailers. Pacific Trade International is one of a small but growing number of U.S. manufacturers that are bringing production back from overseas.