Regional Business News

"This is really going to be nice for North Dakota. It’s another outlook for North Dakota farmers," Hoberg said.

Called the Sonicman, the patented product sells for about $75,000. It’s used by companies to remix or reformulate products that have been stored in frozen form.

OneEighty has about 80 employees and also provides data services and other products to customers in Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, the Tri-Cities, and in Montana and Wyoming. The privately held company reported 2003 revenue of about $10 million.

Although that mission is open to all Utah companies eager to do business in China, the state is focusing on firms in the environmental and biomedical industries.

“Our customers tend to want to work with integration companies in their own back yard,” said Maupin. “Giving our customers more options gives Blackfin more value to us.”

Wendy Curran, director of the Wyoming Medical Society, said while UHIC’s decision was not based on the Legislature’s failure to promote tort reform, that inaction makes Wyoming a tough sell to insurance companies in general.

"We don’t have anything to offer," Curran said. "The message of the Legislature is, ‘we’re not interested in doing anything.’ "

The quality of life on a farm can’t be beat, Ralph says. People in the city buy little pieces of land in the country just for a taste of it.

Paul Finman knows he looks like a pointy-headed professor. But if his Post Falls company keeps racking up more product orders, the 48-year-old Finman might end up the poster boy for how to save good manufacturing jobs in America.

"There’s a prayer around here," said State Representative Randall B. Luthi, the Republican majority floor leader in the House, who raises cattle and practices law in the town of Freedom. "Dear God, give us another boom and we promise not to waste it this time."

Spokane’s Itronix Corp. has sold about 1,000 of its rugged computers to the U.S. Air Force, allowing maintenance crews to speed up work on military aircraft at bases around the country. Tom Sowa Staff writer…