Exit Visa With export financing options limited, some states are helping U.S. businesses go global. Could your company do with a ticket abroad?

After a successful stint in the pharmaceutical industry, Shawn Kinney launched Hyaluron Inc.in 1999 as a manufacturer of hyaluronic acid, a product that can be extracted from rooster combs and used in orthopedics and eye surgery. Because hyaluronic acid is viscous, or resistant to flow, the company developed a process for putting the product into a syringe. Though born out of necessity, Hyaluron's syringe-filling expertise soon evolved into a bona fide commercial niche. Today, the $10 million company--which provides formulation and sterile manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries--has a growing international client roster.

Hyaluron recently had the opportunity to expand manufacturing capabilities at its Burlington, Massachusetts, facility by adding equipment to freeze-dry its clients' products, prolonging their shelf life. "To do that, we also needed to upgrade and enhance our clean-room capabilities," recalls Kinney, 48, Hyaluron's president and CEO. His longtime bank encouraged him to seek funds from Massachusetts' economic development agency, MassDevelopment, which offers foreign-trade financing to support economic growth and job creation in the state.

With an international track record in Australia and Europe and plans to do business with Asian firms, Hyaluron was an ideal financing candidate for MassDevelopment, which ultimately came through with a $1 million low-interest loan from its Emerging Technology Fund. The loan is backed by an export loan guarantee, letting MassDevelopment give Hyaluron a larger loan than is typically available through the Emerging Technology Fund.