Washington's Department of Commerce will distribute $1 million across seven companies and industry groups through the third round of its Evergreen Manufacturing Growth Grants, pairing the state outlay with roughly $32 million in announced and matching capital spending.

Commerce announced the awards from Olympia and split them into two tiers: four business expansion grants at $150,000 each and three innovation cluster awards at $130,000 each. The program funds projects that grow manufacturing and research-and-development headcount, push technology adoption, and connect industry partners.

"These grants help Washington businesses expand, create living-wage jobs and strengthen local economies," said Andrea Chartock, assistant director of Commerce's Office of Economic Development and Competitiveness. "This round includes projects in communities that don't always have access to the same investment opportunities as larger markets."

What does the business expansion tier fund?

The four $150,000 recipients concentrate on facility builds, workforce pipelines, and one offshore-energy prototype aimed at a fast-moving compute application.

• Atlas Technologies (Port Townsend, Jefferson County): $1.6 million capital plan to expand the Glen Cove Industrial Park facility and continue a machinist apprenticeship with AJAC. Owner Jed Bothell framed the timing as capacity-driven: "We've increased customer count and production volume to the point that we just don't fit in our current space."
• Custom Source Woodworking (Chehalis, Lewis County): Market analysis and workforce training to support a $4.9 million expansion, including a building acquisition.
• Agpro Marketing & Manufacturing (Whitman County): $2.2 million facility purchase at the Port of Wilma, plus $80,000 in infrastructure upgrades, with planned wages above the county average.
• Thompson Metal Fab and Panthalassa (Clark County): A joint prototype program for an offshore energy platform sized to power AI inference at sea, paired with $800,000 in facility and equipment upgrades at the Vancouver site.

What do the three cluster awards add?

The $130,000 cluster grants fund ecosystem mapping, permitting, and supplier matchmaking rather than single-tenant capacity builds.

• VERTical Innovation Cluster (Tri-Cities): Site and market analysis for a proposed large-scale advanced manufacturing facility and a Washington Supplier Ecosystem Connectivity Program built around the ATLAS PM-HIP (powder metallurgy/hot isostatic pressing) initiative. Executive Director Rick Heath said the work extends beyond one site: "It supports a connected statewide innovation ecosystem."
• Natural Resources Innovations Center (Olympic Peninsula): Engineering, permitting, and upgrades to reactivate a cogeneration facility on a former 72-acre industrial waterfront site in Port Angeles. The grant unlocks $22.4 million in matching commitments from private partners, the Makah Tribe, and the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure.
• Space Northwest (Greater Seattle): Ecosystem study of Washington's commercial space sector plus curriculum-based workforce programming, leveraging $100,000 in committed partner funding.

How should R&D managers read the portfolio?

The Evergreen program draws on state economic development budgets, not federal R&D streams, so the awards function as workforce-and-capacity support rather than direct research dollars. The Thompson/Panthalassa project is the clearest R&D-adjacent bet: it finances shared prototype work for a power-generation platform whose customer is data-center compute, not traditional offshore oil and gas.

Commerce Interim Director Sarah Clifthorne positioned the round within the state's broader manufacturing pitch: "Washington offers manufacturers a strong culture of innovation and a highly skilled workforce."

The awards concentrate funding outside the Seattle metro core, spreading across Jefferson, Lewis, Whitman, Clark, Benton (Tri-Cities), Clallam, and King counties. For vendors scouting pilot sites and partners, the VERTical cluster's ATLAS PM-HIP work and Panthalassa's offshore-AI prototype are the two highest-R&D-content threads to track as the grants convert into facility buildout over the next one to three years.