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Manufacturing by Alaskans is on the upswing. The Department of Commerce and Economic Development reports that more than 300 businesses have requested and been awarded the two-bear "Made in Alaska" logo since initiating the program more than a year ago.
These outfits aren't of the labor-intensive variety. Most are smaller (excluding some segments of the seafood industry) and fill some kind of niche the state market readily consumes.
"Most of them are service oriented," said economic development specialist Jim Weideman who heads the Made in Alaska program at the state level for the Department of Commerce and Economic Development's Division of Business Development.
Weideman says that although meager compared to other states, more companies in Alaska are involved in "some small form of manufacturing than we ever thought."
Dolls, sausages, jams & jellies, candies, truck springs, aircraft parts, yogurt, batteries, musk ox woolies -- they're all part of the stateside arsenal.
But how is an operation begun?
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