HATTIESBURG AMERICAN
EDITORIAL
Thursday, October 11, 2007
HYBRID'S EXPANSION GREAT NEWS FOR STATE
Here's a story the national news media won't be clamoring to get. But they should.
The story is Hybrid Plastics' $2.3 million, 15,000-square-foot expansion of its Hattiesburg plant in the Hattiesburg-Forrest County Industrial Park.
The company, which moved from California to Hattiesburg in 2004, is in the forefront of nanotechnology, which, simply put, develops materials at the atomic and molecular level.
Hybrid Plastics' unique product is POSS - Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane - a silicon-based molecule measured in nanometers - or billionths of a meter. The company holds the patent to the product and manufactures it only in Hattiesburg.
"Everyone across the world is buying POSS - a technology made here in Mississippi and it can't be made anywhere else in the world," Hybrid president and co-founder Joe Lichtenhan said. "That's going to guarantee us a place in global technology." ...
Hybrid is also building an additional $2.8 million expansion so it can produce up to 500 tons a year of a lower purity product that can be used in less sensitive applications.
Credit is due to former University of Southern Mississippi president Shelby Thames who aggressively marketed USM's polymer science program. It was also under his watch that the university began plans for the Innovation and Commercialization Park along Classic Drive. The park will soon allow entrepreneurs to start businesses such as Hybrid.
While the news that Hybrid Plastics is expanding is great, the fact is that it's not likely to get much attention beyond South Mississippi. Few people in other parts of the country will ever know anything about the company. Mississippi? Isn't that the third-world state that's at the top or the bottom of every statistical list?
Nanotechnology? Surely not in Mississippi.
But it's true. These are the types of jobs that Mississippi needs to encourage. And to do that, it takes leaders with vision. And it takes a strong education system, from kindergarten through grade 12 and beyond.
For the full story, visit the Hattiesburg American website: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071011/OPINION01/710110359/1014/OPINION