Taft Presents $859,691 Third Frontier Award to OptiCast
FINDLAY, OHIO (October 23, 2003) - Governor Bob Taft today awarded Findlay-based OptiCast, Inc., a $859,691 Third Frontier Action Fund award to commercialize cheaper eyeglasses and create 50 new, good jobs within five years.
"We can't compete by making boots or bicycles in Ohio anymore," Taft said. "Ohio must be the place where new knowledge is used to create new products, new businesses and new jobs. And we must be a leader in the new, promising technologies of the future, like advanced materials."
OptiCast manufactures and sells a low cost manufacturing system that allows prescription polymer eyeglass lenses to be produced inexpensively for the customer at the point of sale-in less than five minutes. The Third Frontier Action Fund award will be used add new, commercially attractive features to Opticast's existing system such as scratch resistance, anti-reflective coatings and greater durability. In addition, the company is working on lenses for the military and laboratory applications that contain dyes for blocking laser light.
This project is in collaboration with Spectra Group Limited, Inc. of Toledo and the Photoinstrumentation and Photopolymerization Laboratory at Bowling Green State University. The Photoinstrumentation and Photopolymerization Laboratory received a $2,000,000 Third Frontier Wright Capital Project Fund award in June to further the development of the laboratory as a resource to assist companies such as OptiCast in commercializing photochemical technology.
The Third Frontier Project is Taft's $1.6 billion job creation program to expand Ohio's high-tech research capabilities and promote start-up companies to create high-paying jobs. It is the state's largest-ever economic development investment and has received bi-partisan support from the Ohio Legislature. The final part of the Third Frontier Project, a $500 million bond program up for voter approval in November, would allow the state to allocate $50 million annually over the next 10 years to attract top research talent to Ohio institutions, help with the development and commercialization of new products and create new, good jobs for Ohioans.
