Ohio teams with Huntington

The Ohio Huntington Business Loan Program was formed in May 2009 to help retain and create jobs for small businesses, and has recently benefited the University of Toledo spin-off company Xunlight Corporation.

Huntington National Bank CEO Steve Steinour said the goal of the partnership is to offer $1 billion in loans for small businesses and after one year, approximately $450 million has already been lent to businesses.

Xunlight Corp. is one of two local companies that received loans from the Ohio Huntington Business Loan Program

According to Xunming Deng, president and CEO of Xunlight Corp., the company is a graduate of UT’s Clean and Alternative Energy Incubator and Xunlight’s lightweight, flexible solar panel technology was developed at UT.

Xunlight, which received a total of $3 million from the partnership, will now have an easier time converting “many blue collar workers into green collar workers.”

Deng, who is also a physics professor at UT, said financial help from the Ohio Huntington program has allowed Xunlight to expand and become a leader in solar panels.

“This important financial support allowed us to develop and improve our technology, expand our production in Ohio, and become a world leader in manufacturing flexible and lightweight solar panels,” he said.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and several other speakers visited the Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation on Friday to discuss the loan program. Strickland said UT was closely related to both companies that received loans and the university is a “center for solar research.”

“Xunlight has grown out of research that was done [at UT],” Strickland said. “Willard and Kelsey is closely associated with UT and these two companies are benefiting from this Huntington slash Ohio state loan partnership. So it was appropriate to talk about the effects of this loan program on these two existing and local companies.”

Huntington CEO Steve Steinour said both of the companies were in financial need and came to Huntington directly or through the state for assistance.

“We have long-term relationship with Huntington and we’ve always been talking about how we always work together and the business is very natural,” Deng said.

“Huntington Bank is making available $1 billion in funding for funds to small business owners within a three-year period of time,” Strickland said. “It’s a way for the state and the bank to work together to try to make access to capital available to smaller businesses and it’s working.”

According to Steinour, it is important to help small businesses receive the capital necessary to create jobs because 60 to 70 percent of new job opportunities come from small businesses.

“The capital they get allows them to invest in their businesses and those investments translate into jobs,” he said.

Michael Cicak, CEO of Willard and Kelsey, said without this program, his company would not be able to move into the production of their solar panels.

“Our plans are to be in full production in July, which will employ 200 people and over the next two years, we should have approximately 1,000 people employed,” he said.

Deng said currently there are 110 employees at Xunlight, but with the loan, he expects many more jobs to be available.

Steinour said the partnership between the state and Huntington is significant because it is rare to see the government and a private bank working together.

“We already have hundreds of jobs created in the worst economic times since the Great Depression,” Steinour said. “There’s an economic multiplier because all of those people who are now employed, are spending money in the community.”

According to Steinour, individuals with new jobs will spend money in their community, which would expand other small businesses and create more jobs out of the hundreds of jobs created from the program.

Huntington has decided to expand the loan program to its six-state region of Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, since the Ohio Huntington Program has been successful, according to Steinour.

“Two weeks ago, we said we would be lending $4 billion inclusive of the $1 billion with Ohio throughout our footprint for small businesses,” he said. “We hope to touch about 27,000 small businesses.”