Excerpted from Trade & Industry Development

Governor Scott Walker made a stop at Ball Corporation in DeForest for a brief tour of the operations.  Ball Corporation, an iconic American company more than a century old, is expanding its metal container operations — a project expected to create approximately 40 new jobs and retain another 106 positions.

Ball will invest $18 million to expand and equip its existing 400,000 square-foot facility in the Madison suburb that will enable the company to install a new product line for extruded aluminum aerosol cans. Construction is now under way and the line is expected to be operational early next year.

“I’m pleased that a multi-national company with a rich history has decided to expand its operations here after considering options in other states,” said Governor Walker, who was in DeForest today to make the jobs announcement.  “As the state’s business climate continues to improve, we are seeing more companies recognize the many advantages of relocating or growing in Wisconsin.  This is great news for Dane County, the region, and the state.”

“As a leader in the production of innovative, sustainable metal packaging, Ball is continually working to optimize its global manufacturing footprint to meet our customers’ needs,” said Michael Feldser, chief operating officer, global metal food and household products packaging.  “Our DeForest plant, which became part of Ball in 1993, is home to a very talented group of employees and is ideally located for serving customers throughout the Midwest, so Wisconsin is the perfect location for this expansion.”

“Dane County and the surrounding area boast a long legacy in manufacturing, making it an ideal location for Ball Corp.’s expansion,” added Paul Jadin, president of the Madison Region Economic Partnership.  “With facilities located all across the nation and globe, Ball’s decision to grow locally illustrates the region’s capacity for high-end production and skilled labor.”

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Excerpted from Janesville Gazette
By Jim Leute

What started as a dream 12 years ago moved closer to reality Wednesday when George Messina worked a shovel into rock-hard soil on Beloit’s far east side.

It wasn’t easy, but it was reflective of Messina’s efforts to build a facility that ultimately could produce medical radioisotopes.

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes broke ground for a 50,000-square-foot facility on Gateway Boulevard that will house the company’s headquarters and activities related to the production of the medical radioisotope molybdenum-99. NorthStar is one of three U.S. companies supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration as it pushes for a more reliable and diverse supply of Mo-99, which is primarily used for detecting heart disease and determining stages of cancer progression.

SHINE Medical Technologies is another. It plans to build and open an isotope production plant in Janesville by 2017.

Historically, most Mo-99 used in the United States has been produced in Canada and the Netherlands using highly enriched uranium in high power research reactors. Both the Canadian and Netherlands reactors are operating beyond their licensed lives, and unscheduled shutdowns of the reactors in 2009 and 2010 caused worldwide shortages that delayed or canceled millions of medical procedures.

Both plants are scheduled for permanent closure.

“What we’re trying to do is avert a medical crisis,” said Messina, NorthStar’s chief executive officer who founded the company in 2002 with Glenn Isensee, the company’s chief technology officer.

The Beloit facility is the first phase of development on the 32-acre site.

Future phases could expand the buildings to a total of 200,000 square feet in the next six to eight years, Messina said.

Initially, 20 employees will work in the new facility.

Employment could grow to 165 by 2018, Messina said.

“Most of these people would be engineers and scientists averaging $70,000 to $80,000 a year,” he said.

Reed Hall, secretary of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and a 34-year executive with Marshfield Clinic, said the NorthStar project is important on several fronts.

The $150 million project will ultimately provide 165 jobs with substantial salaries, he said. “What this does is move our economy forward, and it moves the medical community forward,” he said. “I’ve said before that the renaissance continues here in Rock County, and this is a major chapter in that renaissance.”

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Excerpted from Channel3000.com

The Center for World University Rankings has ranked the University of Wisconsin as the 25th-best university in the world.

The rankings are based on eight criteria, including quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, citations, broad impact and patents.

While the 2,000-university list has schools from all over the world, eight of the top 10 universities are in the U.S.

The ranking lists UW as the 18th best university in the country, the 21st in the world for publications and the 23rd in the world for citations.

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Excerpted from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By Kathleen Gallagher

Riding high on big paydays from companies such as Braintree, Groupon and GrubHub, Chicago investors are looking outside the Midwest’s biggest city for some of their next investments. One increasingly popular option: Madison’s digital start-ups.

Chicago has seen significant growth in new technology companies in recent years. As successful Windy City start-ups have been sold or gone public, their investors have reaped profits that they want to funnel back into promising young companies.

Some of that money is flowing to new Wisconsin businesses, including companies that are applying their technological prowess to routine activities such as ordering takeout food and refilling prescriptions.

“We don’t see as many people fleeing toward (Silicon) Valley anymore. We’re seeing them come to Chicago or stay in Madison,” said Stuart Larkins, a partner at Chicago Ventures, which operates a $40 million venture capital fund that includes three Wisconsin start-ups in its portfolio. Those companies include Healthfinch Inc., which has developed a product to help doctors shift prescription refills to other members of their staff.

Entrepreneurs who have stayed in Madison include a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison computer science graduates who in 2008 started PerBlue Inc., a mobile game developer. Chicago-based Lightbank LLC, a technology investment fund that was an early backer of Groupon, led a funding round in May that pumped $3 million into the start-up.

Chicago has had three big successes that are considered $1 billion achievements: Investors who still have stakes in Groupon and GrubHub, an online food-ordering service, have watched the market capitalizations of those companies surpass $1 billion. Braintree, which ran a payments gateway, nearly reached the $1 billion mark when it was acquired by PayPal for $800 million in cash last year.

While not as far along, Madison has been building an entrepreneurial ecosystem of its own that is attracting out-of-state investment. At the community’s core are technically skilled students from UW-Madison and droves of recruits from top schools that are coming to work at rapidly expanding Epic Systems in Verona.

“A lot of the entrepreneurs I’ve interacted with have been pretty humble, blocking and tackling-type folks who are really trying to execute — the type who are mentorable and have businesses that can become strong companies,” said Michael Gruber, founder of Cornerstone Angels. Through its affiliated funds, the Chicago angel investing group was the biggest investor in a $6 million funding round this year for EatStreet Inc., a Madison company that runs an order management platform for restaurants.

UW-Madison students tend to be more predisposed to starting companies than their counterparts at other big universities, said Jeff Carter, co-founder of Hyde Park Angels, a Chicago angel investing group.

“Madison is definitely a place we want to do more investing in if we can,” Carter said.

Chicago investors say Madison is part of a larger regional strategy that encompasses Ann Arbor, Mich., Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis and other Midwest entrepreneurial hot spots.

That sort of regional perspective is exactly what the Midwest needs to attract more investment dollars from the coasts, said Lisa Johnson, vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.

For Wisconsin, it is important to continue to build on Madison’s entrepreneurial infrastructure, said John Philosophos, business development partner in the Chicago office of Great Oaks Venture Capital LLC in New York.

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Excerpted from Wisconsin State Journal
By Judy Newman

If traffic on the southwest side suddenly seems heavier, there could be a reason: Epic Systems Corp., the Verona electronic health records powerhouse, is in the midst of another big boost to its staff.

Spokesman Shawn Kiesau declined to comment on how many employees have come on board the privately owned Epic at any particular time, but he said he is now telling news media the health IT company has 7,400 employees. That’s up 600 from February, when the company reported having a staff of 6,800.

“Epic’s continued growth is exciting for Wisconsin and the region. It attracts homegrown talent as well as people from well beyond our borders who bring a new dimension to the state and our economy,” said Tom Still, Wisconsin Technology Council president. “Health information technologies are redefining medicine and health care delivery in many ways, and Epic continues to play on the leading edge.”