After 20 years of not being used, B&M Baked Beans in Portland announced that they would be removing the smokestack that has stood at their plant for 65 years. At the time, Mainers didn't think much of it. Technologies change and if it wasn't being used, why not take the aging stack down as a safety precaution? As it turned out, it was the beginning of a major change for the business that had been in Portland for 150 years.

Taking down a smokestack just a few feet from a building that is not going to be demolished requires a lot of precision. You can't just set up explosive charges and let the thing topple to the ground. It has to come down piece by piece. That's where Interstate Sawing and Demolition based out of West Bend, Wisconsin came in.

In an impressive feat of engineering, Industrial Access hoisted a heavy piece of demolition equipment and two workers over 150 feet in the air with two separate cranes. The remote-controlled robotic claw was used to take the stack down one brick at a time and they managed to complete the removal of the smokestack in just seven days.

Interstate Sawing and Demolition captured the process through drone video and posted it to their YouTube channel. Not only do you see how they did the work, but you get some amazing ariel views of Portland and Casco Bay.

Just weeks after the stack came down an announcement was made by B&G Foods, the parent company of B&M. The Portland B&M plant would be closing, with operations moving to the midwest. A buyer for the building and land had already been found and it will be converted into a technology graduate school. Out with the old tech and in with the new, I suppose.

Those bricks are a piece of Portland history. Things will never be the same without smelling those baked beans cooking in the giant cast iron pots as you drive over Tukey's Bridge.

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