The Small Business Administration named Sciencix, a 25-employee maker of chromatography and mass-spectrometry parts, its 2023 Small Business Exporter of the Year. The company has headquarters in North Carolina and a manufacturing plant in Minnesota. The award recognizes an export path built around a targeted grant rather than a broad claim that every small manufacturer can scale abroad the same way. [story-s1]
With help from North Carolina’s Small Business and Technology Development Center, Sciencix obtained $24,000 through the SBA’s State Trade Expansion Program in 2021. The funds offset international trade-show attendance, meetings with overseas distributors and website internationalization. SBA reported exports represented one-third of Sciencix’s total sales, up 10 percent from 2020, and said the company’s products supported laboratories in more than 100 countries. The release does not quantify the grant’s return or isolate it from other causes of export growth; it does offer a concrete example of how the program’s eligible activities can fit together. [story-s1]
The company makes parts used in liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry, including applications such as drug testing, contamination analysis and pesticide detection. The award was to be presented alongside other National Small Business Week honors in Washington from April 30 through May 2, 2023. Read narrowly, the case is useful as an operational illustration: a grant helped pay for market-entry activities, while the reported sales share shows the scale of exports in the firm’s mix—not a guaranteed outcome for future applicants. [story-s1]
Source documents
- U.S. Small Business Administration Announces 2023 Exporter of the Yearhttps://www.sba.gov/article/2023/03/27/us-small-business-administration-announces-2023-exporter-year