We also have offices and staff near Amsterdam and in Tokyo. I expect us to grow to approximately 300 direct employees by 2005. At capacity this plant will produce 300 million pounds per year of a polymer product. Our Blair plant starts up in November of this year. Let me step back and tell a more complete story.
Carbon is stored in plant starches and biomass, which can be broken down into simple sugars.
We realize that the market pull for PLA will provide a tremendous opportunity due to economies of scale for all of the products people discuss with in the context of a biorefinery. We also realize the technology we are developing will have broad application for other industrial chemicals, polymers, and biofuels. We are already funding and developing biotechnology that can be applied to fuel ethanol as well as lactic acid. We'll back integrate to starches, whole corn, stover, then other biomass crops. The rate at which we can back integrate will depend on when the technologies are advanced enough and the risks are reduced enough so that we can convince investors to capital up.