Living our Values

People

We really care about our people. Providing good employment and living wage to all people, regardless of their background, is important to us. Our starting wages are above minimum and meet or exceed the living wage standards for Maine and Androscoggin County. We work hard to support employees in reaching long-term professional goals through opportunities for education, training, and promotions within the company. All full-time employees have access to healthcare through the company, which Blue OX Malthouse subsidizes to make it more affordable.

We have always been an equal-opportunity employer, welcoming applicants of all backgrounds and identities to our team. However, we know we can do more and be more vocal about diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is why we made the Crafted for All pledge to demonstrate that this is ongoing work for us and our community.

Returning Organic Waste to the Nutrient Cycle

We’re lucky. The primary waste from the malting process itself is hot air, grain-soaked water, and grain-off products (think husks and rootlets). That’s it. Increasing efficiency is the primary way to reduce the air and water, and it’s the organic grain material we are left to eliminate. We are able to repurpose and package this for animal feed for local and regional farms, and anything that we cannot use for animal feed gets taken by a local farmer who composts it—returning the nutrients locked inside back to the soil whence it came.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Our least favorite part of malting? It’s not the 24/7 schedule or the hard physical labor. It is the fact that the only durable packaging that keeps our product fresh and at its best quality for brewers is single-use polyethylene woven bags, plastic totes, or 50 lb plastic bags.

Malt bag waste is an industry-wide problem, and we’re grateful to tackle it with partners like Allagash Brewing on an initiative to centralize these and other packaging standard materials to get them back to an organization that can recycle them.

Internally, we have initiated a Grain Tote Return program to take back bulk packing, clean, sterilize, and reuse malt bags rather than simply throwing them away. Currently, we reuse about 50% of the totes returned to us, and our ongoing mission is to improve that number.

Banking and Buying Local

We know that when we keep our money locally, that money gets invested back into our community—not multinationals. Intentionally, we have banked locally from day one, financing our project with CEI as the lead lender. When it came time to refinance our initial loan, we worked with Androscoggin Bank to keep our money local. When we wanted to diversify our portfolio, Maine Harvest Credit Union-whose mission is to make equipment loans to farmers in Maine-was the perfect choice. We buy locally too. All our custom equipment, from our steep tanks to our kiln, were designed and built right by fabricators right here in Maine!