Out of this world: Santa Barbara company produces saucer-shaped UAVs
Flying saucers have landed in Santa Barbara.
Aerobat Aviation, a Santa Barbara firm with ties to Georgia, is planning to take its saucer-shaped unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, on the road in the coming months hoping to raise $5 million from investors.
On a 40-year roll: P&G paper plants set to mark milestone in Oxnard
Procter & Gamble will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its Family Care Plant in Oxnard this month, a remarkable milestone when viewed against the decline in manufacturing jobs in California and across the nation. The Oxnard plant makes Bounty paper towels and Charmin toilet tissue in huge quantities that supply California and parts of the western U.S.
Refinery rail project would ease crude oil supply concerns
A Phillips 66 refinery on the Nipomo Mesa is hoping to supplement its dwindling inflow of California crude by extending a rail spur that will allow it to import oil from out of state.
The refinery — tucked away off of Highway 1 in South San Luis Obispo County — is a little-known yet critical part of the Golden State’s petroleum infrastructure. It processes the state’s heavy, sour crude into semi-refined products that flow through 200 miles of pipeline to Conoco’s 128,000-barrel-a-day facility in Rodeo in the Bay Area, where it is turned into gasoline.
Tracking liquid assets: Groundswell creates Web-based water maps
Santa Barbara-based Groundswell Technologies makes Web-based software that can integrate data from any source — whether it’s a cutting-edge sensor connected via satellites or historical records — and generate “heat maps” of water supply or contamination on demand. The key is leveraging powerful computers in the cloud to handle lots of data and generate reports that used to take weeks in a matter of seconds.
Mindbody breaks ground on $20M campus in SLO tech corridor
San Luis Obispo is set to get its flagship high-tech campus as software company MindBody CEO Rick Stollmeyer and local officials broke ground Oct. 29 on a $20 million project including a new office building, four-story parking structure and promenade that will link with an existing facility, eventually boosting employment to 1,300 people.
Ratings agencies unfazed as county pension costs rise
Despite dire warnings that future pension costs could cause a fiscal meltdown for tri-county governments, credit ratings for Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo county bonds remain mostly unaffected by looming gaps in their retirement obligation funding.
Standard & Poor’s, a leading rating agency, ranks all three counties near the top of a scale that spans from its highest AAA to C, the lowest rating a bond can have without defaulting. Santa Barbara County carries the agency’s second highest AA-plus designation. Ventura County is assigned a slightly lower AA-rating this year and SLO County is ranked AA-minus.
