A $500,000 loan by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency has allowed a Weymouth sawmill to install sophisticated equipment to produce its finger joint moulding more efficiently.

The financing was one of 16 approved by the agency and posted on its website for public disclosure over the last month.

Jamie Lewis, general manager of Lewis Moulding, said Wednesday the new equipment "reads" defects in wood, allowing for improvements in the way wood is cut. It will also reduce waste.

The 26-year-old company operates a 52,000-square-foot operation consisting of sawmill, four kilns, a production facility and a warehouse. It employs 60 workers and sells 50 per cent of its production into the local market and the rest into Central Canada and New England.

Another major ACOA financing last month was $500,000 for the Telecom Applications Research Alliance, a Halifax-based organization looking at communications applications and services.

Alliance president Wayne Bussey said the ACOA money is earmarked for the development of pre-commercial activities in artificial intelligence. It represents matching funds provided by Precarn, a national not-for-profit agency created to help commercialize research.

Mr. Bussey said the money will likely be invested in five or six different projects, but it will take a month or more to decide which of several possibilities will be the first to receive funding. Some early Precarn projects resulted in the development of the Canadarm, used on space shuttles and the international space station, but Mr. Bussey said local initiatives are more likely to apply artificial intelligence to things like e-mail management, or controlling virus activity on the Internet...

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