The new 50,000-sq.-ft. (4,650-sq.-m.) addition to the Maple Leaf Bakery plant in Roanoke, Va., includes a new Mecatherm Megaline that will produce up to 6,000 loaves of bread per hour.

Technology Infrastructure:
Talent is Job One

Of course, recruiting biotech firms and landing them are two different things. In Virginia, the infrastructure is in place to support them. Consider the following numbers:
        • Virginia ranks as the sixth-largest employer of high-technology workers, according to the Cyberstates 2002 ranking by the American Electronics Association.
        • Virginia ranks as the eighth best state in the nation for entrepreneurs, according to Waltham, Mass.-based Cognetics.
        • Virginia ranks third in the country in concentration of high-growth companies, according to The Brandow Company of Camp Hill, Pa.
        • Virginia has two of the top five metro areas in the nation for producing high-growth firms, according to Brandow. They are Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
        Other numbers of note include the following:
        • The state has 228,882 people employed in high-tech jobs, and high-tech firms employ 81 of every 1,000 private-sector workers in Virginia, ranking the state fourth nationwide.
        • High-tech workers earned an average wage of $75,800 in 2000, or 117 percent more than the average private-sector wage. The state's high-tech payroll of $17 billion a year ranks fifth in the country.
        • Virginia ranks second nationwide in software services employment, fourth in data processing and information services jobs, eighth in communications services jobs and ninth in venture capital investment.
        The ultimate measurement of any state's success, however, can't be found in statistics or rankings. It is found in the jobs created at new and expanded facilities paid for by the capital investment of companies.
        On that score, Virginia's haul in 2002 is impressive. Most of the large expansion projects in the Old Dominion have come in these sectors: biotech/life sciences; advanced manufacturing; transportation and logistics; and telecommunications and software.
        In addition to the Eli Lilly and Novozymes projects, significant Virginia expansions have been announced this year in biotech/life sciences by Biotage, Incogen and Carilion Health System.
        Biotage Inc., an industry leader in drug discovery purification, recently moved into a new 55,000-sq.-ft. (5,110-sq.-m.) facility in Charlottesville. About 70 people work at the plant, which will eventually employ 100 workers.
        "Globally, pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to create more novel therapeutic lead compounds, and the No. 1 bottleneck is the purif ication step," said Cheryl Duke, director of marketing for Biotage.
        Biotage makes the equipment used by drug companies to purify samples. The company was drawn to Charlottesville by the presence of the medical research staff and resources of the University of Virginia. In fact, the company decided to locate its new plant at the UVA Research Park at North Fork in Albemarle County.
        Incogen, a leader in the developing field of bioinformatics, announced in late 2001 that it would relocate from South Carolina to the Busch Corporate Center in James City County, Va. As part of the move, Incogen will work with the College of William and Mary and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech to develop computational solutions for researchers in genomics.
        Incogen will invest $2.4 million and create 20 new positions including software developers, database and system administrators, quality assurance managers, research scientists and support staff. Incogen selected Virginia over North Carolina, Ohio and Colorado, which also competed for the project.
        "Williamsburg provides an ideal location for our company," says Dr. Maciek Sasinowski, founder and CEO of Incogen. "The area offers a wonderful quality of life and provides an environment which allows companies such as Incogen to succeed."
        Carilion Health System, meanwhile, announced several successes at its newly created Carilion Biomedical Institute (CBI) in Roanoke. BioPhile Inc., which makes automated high-tech laboratory freezers that store and retrieve medical tissue, blood and DNA samples, was the first full-fledged biotech company to be produced by the institute.
        CBI is the first tenant at the Riverside Centre for Research and Technology, a 110-acre (44.6-hectare) research and development park in Roanoke. Over the next several years, CBI will invest $30 million into its facility.