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Innolyzer Labs Takes Home Startup Prize Victory

Shreveport Times Monday, September 14, 2015

INNOLYZER LABS TAKES HOME STARTUP PRIZE VICTORY
ADAM DUVERNAY
[email protected]
photo by Stan Carpenter/The Times
Another prize is in the bag, and no one walked away a loser. The Louisiana Startup Prize concluded Sunday with the announcement Innolyzer Labs would take home $25,000 cash; $10,000 worth of marketing services from Williams Creative Group; $10,000 worth of accounting services from Heard, McElroy and Vestal; one free year of office space in the American Tower; and a $5,000 corporate video provided by Fairfield Studios. The Innolyzer Labs team included John Chidlow, Chris Kevil and Kevin Pavlick. The company plans to launch a “lab-on-a-chip,” a product for hydrogen sulfide detection. Its LOAC device, about the size of a cigarette, will detect the molecule in liquids and is designed as a medical or general analytical device.

“We kind of started doing this thing just to network and meet some people. It’s been a great experience and a lot of fun,” Chidlow said. “This has been a really collaborative effort and it’s been a chance to get to know each other and figure out what we’re doing.” The other teams — Nanopore Diagnostics LLC, Beau Vodka, RNvention and Tri-D Dynamics — also impressed investors participating in the business competition. All got expressions of serious intent from investors and at least two should soon hear “very good news,” according to Startup Prize founder Gregory Kallenberg.

Everyone who spoke at the Petroleum Club announcement event Sunday agreed that’s really the point of the competition — to make connections, advance business strategies and innovate together.

“With all the entrepreneurs involved, if you were a member of the Top 5 you had advocates going into that room. Everybody in the Top 5 had people pulling for them. You already were winners when you went in,” said Williams Creative Group President Judy Williams.

National beverage manufacturer Multipack Services to host job fair for wide range of open positions.
National beverage manufacturer Multipack Services, which packages and distributes beverages for nationally recognized brands, is hosting a job fair Tuesday, Oct. 8 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at its Shreveport location.
Multipack is located at 2791 Valley View Drive in Shreveport.

Job titles for open positions include: Quality Manager, Quality Technician, Maintenance Manager, Maintenance Technician, Warehouse Manager, Warehouse Technician, Operations Supervisor, Operations Manager and Packaging Technician.

Starting wages will be $18 per hour and above. Some positions are salaried.

For more information on positions for hire, visit BRFLA.org/jobfair. Candidates should be prepared for on-site interviews.
“This job fair is an opportunity for people to join a new build and a national company at our Shreveport location in our first round of staffing. It’s not an everyday opportunity, and we’re looking for individuals who are high energy and want to start their new career,” said Justin Wilkinson, Vice President of Operations.

Louisiana Economic Development (LED), Multipack Services and regional and state economic development partners BRF, North Louisiana Economic Partnership and the Caddo Parish Industrial Development Board announced Multipack Services’ new location in December of last year.

The company expects to create 141 direct new jobs with an average annual salary of more than $51,000. LED estimated that the project would result in an additional 228 indirect jobs, for a total of 369 new jobs in the Northwest region.

“Multipack is ready to gear up its operation in its state-of-the-art facility to offer a wide range of services, including product specifications and design. The site is expected to produce more than 100 million cans of beverage products per year. We hope that the community is ready to join in on the ground floor of this operation and be a part of this scale-up,” said John George Jr., M.D., BRF President and CEO.

The job fair is sponsored by BRF, Career Adventures and Lagniappe Sourcing Consulting.