Financing for the plant consists of asset-backed mortgage financing, tax exempt bond proceeds made available through the Richland and Sumter County Federal Empowerment Zone, equipment lease financing and state and local incentives. Biopure will guarantee the lease and secure its guarantee with an assignment of patents, trademarks and proprietary manufacturing technology. The company will also contribute $10 million of equity to the project and enter into a 20-year lease with optional buyout provision after three years.

Myrtle Beach: South Carolina's Top City for Business     Out of 294 metropolitan areas studied by Forbes magazine in its "Best Places for Business 2001" report, Myrtle Beach ranked 29 -- the highest ranking of all South Carolina cities and only second to Raleigh-Durham, N.C., out of both Carolinas. Myrtle Beach climbed 26 spots from it ranking last year of No. 55. Forbes ranks its cities based on job growth, business potential, labor force and a variety of other factors.     "For years, people thought there were only three metro areas in South Carolina -- Charleston, Columbia and Greenville /Spartanburg," explains Walter Sprouse, president of the Myrtle Beach-Horry County Partners Economic Development Corp. "Now more are recognizing that there are four metro areas, and of course that fourth metro is Myrtle Beach."     Dallas-based Builders FirstSource Inc. certainly recognized Myrtle Beach's potential. Groundbreaking ceremonies for the firm's 70,000-sq.-ft. (6,500-sq.-m.) distribution center were held on Nov. 6, 2001. The new facility will be the largest of the company's Southeast Group's holdings and is a consolidation of locations in Murrells Inlet, Conway and Myrtle Beach. The Southeast Group is the largest division of Builders FirstSource and operates 41 distribution centers and 13 manufacturing facilities in six states.

      "The city and the state were both willing to convert the usual job and tax benefits into upfront grants to help reduce the cost of construction," says Francis H. Murphy, CFO of Biopure Corp. "In addition, they were instrumental in putting together the principals of Sumter Realty Group, which will be providing most of the financing."
      Once financing was in place, other key factors came into play. An available, skilled work force, though much lower on the criteria totem pole, still was a high priority for Biopure. In comparison, Jarvis notes, "The work force and technical sophistication that we saw in South Carolina really did exceed that of the Kearney area."
      According to Rust, there are 13,000 industrial workers in Sumter, and many of them in high-tech jobs. One provider of high-tech labor is Shaw Air Force Base, from which Biopure hopes "to attract a number of personnel spouses as potential employees," Murphy notes.
      The only negative aspect of Sumter was the fact that there was no local source of cattle blood, which is needed for the manufacture of the product. Biopure requires ear-tagging its cattle and computer tracking the cows from the time they are born to ensure that they don't receive any mammalian protein other than their mother's milk.
      The solution: Rust and company designed a seven-figure incentive specifically for Biopure to offset the added costs of transporting the cattle blood from a facility it was already using in Pennsylvania. "This is just another example of how Sumter tailored a program that really did answer the requirements of Biopure," Jarvis explains. "South Carolina's business climate is absolutely excellent. They're hungry, they've got a good work force, they have a very pro-business attitude throughout the government, and they have able facilitators."