Continental Tide benefits from PA tax credit program

Continental Tide received more than $82,000 in tax credits from the Department of Community and Economic Development through the Keystone Innovation Zone Program.

For complete details on the tax credits, please read the article below from the Reading Eagle.

Continental Tide benefits from program

Tuesday January 24, 2017 12:01 AM
By Brad Rhen
Reading, PA

A Reading-based defense contractor recently received more than $82,000 in tax credits from the state Department of Community and Economic Development.

Continental Tide Defense Systems Inc., 531 Canal St., received a total of $82,585 as part of the Keystone Innovation Zone program. Continental Tide, which also has locations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego, provides programmatic, engineering and technical services to U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command and other Department of Defense organizations, according to its website. The
company has had a location in Reading since 2011 and has about 25 employees here.

The KIZ program is designed to support and encourage entrepreneurship in and around Pennsylvania's colleges and universities by providing young Pennsylvania companies with vital working capital to meet critical needs, including covering capital expenditures, workforce expansion, operational expenses and making companies more attractive to venture investment. Continental Tide president Keith Reidinger said the company will use the money primarily to upgrade its computer hardware and to hire additional employees.

"We'll use it to increase our hardware capacity, so more PCs, more servers, and also increase our staff in the local area, so more software and computer engineers," he said. The company is also looking to upgrade its fabrication facility, Reidinger said. Then, he said, the company could train people in the Reading area and then use them to work on ships in other locations.

"They can still live in Reading and work on ships in different areas throughout the world," he said. "We do so much work overseas, it really doesn't matter where you live: It really matters where you're trained. You can do work in Wisconsin, you can do work in Bahrain, you can do work in San Diego, you can do work in Guam."

The KIZ program provides tax credits for companies that have been in operation for less than eight years, whose gross revenues have increased over the previous year, are located in a Keystone Innovation Zone and are operating within a targeted industry sector such as information technology or advanced manufacturing and diversified materials. Reidinger said Continental Tide also received a KIZ grant in 2014. The grants are extremely helpful, he said.

"We utilize it to reinvest in the company and then hopefully reinvest in future employees," he said. "It's definitely a big benefit."

The Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry is the program's local coordinator.

"It is important that we support our local talent pipeline, and provide tools for young companies' to transition through the stages of growth and build our entrepreneurial ecosystem," said Gail
Landis, the chamber's vice president of government and community relations.