There’s a saying in the pesticide business you may not be familiar with: two percentof the product does 98percent of the work, with the rest blowing away, evaporating, or landing somewhere where it doesn’t do any good-sort of like when you put on hairspray, or deodorant. So, when Ledebuhr Industries “had the opportunity to license the technology we have from MSU,” said company president Mark Ledebuhr, they jumped on it. What does the technology do? “It’s a fan that sprays,” he explained with a twinkle in his eye.

The company’s mission statement expands on this a bit: “We make fluid metering and atomization products that improve the world around us.” How? In layman’s terms, their products, including Proptec^TM Rotary Atomizers and Proptec^TM Sprayers, reduce the amount of pesticides in the environment by significantly improving the efficiency of their application in a wide variety of uses. How efficient? Ledebuhr said that when properly used, a 25 gallon application can do the job of 100-150 gallons applied using traditional equipment.

Ledebuhr is head of sales for the company, spending the majority of his time visiting customers or in the company’s Williamston offices (shared with P.I. Technology, whose president, Michael Hetherington, has a partial interest in Ledebuhr Industries). Manufacturing of the precision pumps is done in Bath, where Richard Ledebuhr, Mark's father and vice president of design and production, hangs his hat.

They currently employ six people, but the younger Ledebuhr said that business this year has been very good – they’ve experienced 80-100percent growth-and hopes to add at least a couple more people by year’s end.

While their sales are modest-under $1,000,000 annuall-Ledebuhr said that’s not surprising, as the entire agricultural manufacturing business related to sprayers does only about $850 million per year. Factor in a 2-5percent average profit, and it becomes apparent that this industry isn’t what you’d call sexy. Ledebuhr said the technology that most of his competitors use has been around since the 1920s, while the centripetal force rotary atomizer their products are based around has been around “only” since the 1950s. It’s an industry that, by its very nature, evolves at what he called a “glacially slow” pace.

Ledebuhr said their primary marketing method is what he called “plop marketing” – plop the product into the marketplace and let people discover/decide for themselves how best it can be used. On occasion, Ledebuhr said that customers have had to talk him into selling them his products, because he’s skeptical that his equipment can do the job. Of course, he’s happy to be proved wrong.

Rapid BioSense was born as a result of a licensing agreement with the MSU Biosystem group. Dr. Finny Mathew, who developed the core sensing technology around which their product is based, has teamed up with John Cunningham and Andy Lim (the latter two working on the business development) to form the company, which is still in the early stages of product development. Lim said that he’s researched a lot of emerging technology at MSU, but Dr. Finny’s work is the first that he and Cunningham have decided to go forward with. The hurdle now is to “transition the technology from MSU into a commercial entity,” Lim said. In other words, there’s no revenue yet.

Likening themselves to a “biotech garage shop,” Lim said the technology involved has “wide applicability to multiple markets [even though] the technology itself is relatively simple.” Initially, they’re targeting dairy farmers, but plan to expand marketing to broader scale food processing and the human clinical diagnostic market.

Johne’s (pronounced “Yo-nees”) Disease-a contagious bacterial disease of the intestinal tract that occurs in hoofed mammals that chew their cud and have a 3-4 chambered stomach-may not a familiar one, but it has infected 22percent of the dairy cattle herds in our country, and is a worldwide problem. Up to now, detecting it has been a chore. Lim said, “Current state-of-the-art technology is culture-based and takes 5-16 weeks to get a result.” There’s also a 72-hour test, but it’s only about 50percent accurate.

Enter Rapid BioSense. “Our sensor should be able to diagnose the disease in 30 minutes or less,” he said, “with an expected accuracy of 95percent."

Lim said that the beauty of the instrument’s design is that all one has to do is change the chemistry of the sensor to have it work in other applications. They recently received a Small Business Innovation Research Grant from the National Institute of Health “to study the use of the sensor for the detection of bacterial meningitis,” he said, which would allow them to move into human clinical applications.

They’re currently raising money for taking the sensor into production, and reviewing responses for engineering manufacturing partners. Lim said that they’re “looking to raise a couple hundred thousand dollars” that will enable them to build a production prototype, and “another round of fundraising (about $500K) later in the year to get us to full production.”

Lim said that currently the USDA tests 2,000,000 cattle each year, but should be testing five times that many. He said they’ve “contacted all the labs and they’re all eagerly awaiting” the sensor. Several have volunteered time to test the sensor. The basic readers should be priced in the $500 range, with each sample costing between $20 and $40.

They hope to have 500,000 of the sensors manufactured by late 2008. Who the manufacturer will be, and where it will be manufactured, is still unknown. But all manufacturing will be U.S. based, ISO 9000 and FDA certified. And all sales, marketing and research and engineering will take place in their Lansing office.