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Local Probiotics Company Is Missouri’s Exporter Of The Year

The Governor’s Conference on Economic Development in Missouri has named a Kansas City company its Exporter of the Year. SCD Probiotics makes products used for human health, agriculture, veterinary medicine and industry.   

Everything SCD Probiotics makes is based on live bacteria of various kinds. Matt Wood founded and runs the company, making products designed to do everything from improve people’s immune systems, to making barns smell better to tanning leather. The bacteria do the work. Wood says it’s a matter of finding the right ones for the job.

“There are tens of thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of microbes that have never been cultured, never been identified, so it really is a huge frontier of opportunity,” says Wood.

Wood says probiotics is a growth industry.

“Rather than synthesizing a chemical unnaturally, and using a lot of energy and doing it based on petroleum, we’re growing microbes that you apply them and they keep producing that biochemical, but it’s all organic based,” says Wood.

Wood says SCD Probiotics does most of its business overseas, licensing other companies to use its technology, and shipping its own products.

“People have learned to pay a premium for something from the U.S. because they trust it,” says Wood.

Wood says this is a good place for his growing company because Kansas City hosts the biggest concentration of animal health companies in the country and that helps.

“It’s attracting talent, but it’s also growing talent,” says Wood.

Wood says many of his 30 employees are MU, KU and K-state trained biologists. He says he expects the company to grow fast, and that he intends to keep it in Kansas City.

Copyright 2013 KCUR 89.3

Frank Morris has supervised the reporters in KCUR's newsroom since 1999. In addition to his managerial duties, Morris files regularly with National Public Radio. He’s covered everything from tornadoes to tax law for the network, in stories spanning eight states. His work has won dozens of awards, including four national Public Radio News Directors awards (PRNDIs) and several regional Edward R. Murrow awards. In 2012 he was honored to be named "Journalist of the Year" by the Heart of America Press Club.