The perfect facility in a business-friendly rural area is allowing a local man to get his business off the ground in Clearfield Township.
“It’s been a lot of learning over the past two to three years,” Brendan Carroll, owner of CNC Malting Company, says. “We’ve been delayed quite a bit from every which angle which you never see. That’s how starting a business is but I think they’ve all been to our benefit because as we’re delayed, then we learn more and we go back to the drawing board and rethink how we’re going to do it and I feel like we are coming up with a better and better process.”
Carroll purchased the former Clearfield Township Elementary School in June of 20146 for $235,000. Since then, Carroll has spent about $20,000 remodeling and investing in equipment to process barley into malt to be used for micro-brewing beers.
According to Carroll, he has not experienced any issues with the water quality of wells on the property but he has asked for help from a local lawmaker with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection concerning issues of waste water.
“While the water could just continually cycle through the ground here, we pull it out of the well, put it in the septic and leach back down into the well, therefore maintain balance in the ground water,” he said. “That’s not permissible but we’ve been working with the DEP to try to come to an agreement on what to do with the waste water and have enlisted State Representative Brian Ellis’ help. He’s very pro-business and said that a lot of times there’s just a little misunderstanding and he’d pass along our case.”
The facility is expected to be completely up and running by this June with between six and twelve full time employees. Part of the building will also be used to process and sell different kinds of goat cheese and goat milk soaps from goats raised on the property.
Written & Photos By: Ryan Saeler for the Butler Radio Network
