The $8 million investment

By Dick Hughes  

MAY 24, 2010 10:00 a.m. (0)

Alexium, a small Australian company, has set up shop in Greer to further develop protection against chemical warfare agents initially for military clothing, futuristically for everything from aircraft to naval ships and for piggybacking commercial uses.

The company brings to the Upstate an investment of $8 million, a defense contract, a potential for 200 jobs and a story of serendipity, risky investment, insightful vision and smart planning that lead to a product the military wanted and bigger companies failed to see.

The building in Greer with nearly 11,000 square feet will house Alexium’s home laboratory for further testing and development for military purposes and as the base to develop and pursue civilian applications.

“That’s what we are doing as a company, looking at other spin-offs, and we are starting to work with other companies,” said Stephen Ribich, the 43-year-old managing director and chief executive officer who plans to settle here with his family.

He said Alexium “very likely” will do limited production in Greer and will work with other companies to produce and market such commercial products as fire-fighting suits and re-fueling apparel, two potential uses of its protective process.  An application for paints has attracted inquires from paint companies, he said.

“How it all comes out in the wash, I am not quite sure,” he said. “We’re taking it one step at a time.” The first step is to get enough material to the military for field testing.

“We’ve had some very encouraging results, and it has gotten to the stage where the government is requesting hundreds of meters of cloth to be treated so they can start making the first suits, test them, trial them, wear them,” Ribich said.

To do that, Alexium turned to North Carolina State University College of Textiles because “there are many different variations the military wants that require different equipment … and we couldn’t afford to have an investment for one run of this, one for that.”

Ribich said the company was attracted to the Upstate by the expertise that exists in the commercial smart textile business and in university and institute centers such as Clemson, the University of South Carolina and the NC State.

“I would be hard pressed to think of where else we would do this,” he said, noting the evolution of the textile industry here to smart synthetics when clothing moved to cheap labor markets overseas.

“The people who survive here in Greenville and Spartanburg don’t make socks and underclothing. The people who survive here have to be good, have to be smart, have to be better.”

The state and county provided incentives, including property tax rebates, corporate income tax credits, sales tax exemption, job tax credits and other benefits such as employee training and equipment assistance.

Ribich said although the Alexium pretty much decided to be in the Greenville-Spartanburg area, the incentives “sealed the deal.  It really does make a difference.”

Alexium’s story begins in the sands of Kuwait and Iraq during the first Gulf War, when the military became alarmed by the high rate of infections taking troops out of combat, and decided to do something about.  A civilian air force researcher came up with something promising.

“Back four years ago, I came to know the inventor of this technology,” Ribich explained.  Although the research was “going backwards and forwards,” Ribich said “something grabbed me to tell me this was something worth doing.”

Ribich took Owens “to London and put him in front of a banker,” who approved enough of a loan to get the company started.

The Pentagon agreed to license the technology to Alexium and “not to take patents out in the rest of the world;” Owens signed over his rights; and the company and the military signed joint development and research agreements.

The company poured its own money into the research project, raising additional capital in Australia as needed, Ribich said.

The breakthrough came with development of a way to treat breathable clothing, a major advancement on “chemical treatment that basically laments clothing” and wearers “sweat like a pig,” he said.

Further research demonstrated the technology also could be used to shed toxic agents on military equipment and could have commercial uses “not limited to textiles, paints, packaging, glass and building materials.”

Were it not for being on the ground floor when the technology was in its infancy, Ribich said, he doubts Alexium could have competed with bigger companies.

“But we were smart enough to be where we were four or five years ago, and we started making the hard investments then.  And that’s why we are here where we are.”

After seeing Alexium’s “money flowing into the government” in the research partnership, which continues with work on second and third generations of materials, Ribich finally sees the investment paying off with a DOD purchasing order “where the money starts coming the other way.”

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