King examines marketing strategies with ELM president

During a meeting in Grundy Center on Friday afternoon, U.S. Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) and Environmental Lubricants Manufacturing Founder/President Dr. Lou Honary discussed how the company could reach more consumers with its soybean-based greases and lubricants.
           
ELM, founded in 2000, is a leading producer of bio-based products and currently employs seven people at its Grundy Center facility. According to Honary, a former industrial technology professor and director of research for the National Ag-Based Lubricants (NABL) Center at the University of Northern Iowa, his company on the verge of a big breakthrough as it was even featured on The History Channel’s “Modern Marvels” in 2011 for its microwave grease-heating technology. The trouble, however, is actually making it happen.
           
“People don’t know that these products exist. We’re a very small group,” he said. “We try our best to get the word out, but it just takes a generation before you get people to change the culture.”
           
Honary explained that the microwave process has lowered the production cost enough to make ELM competitive with petroleum-based greases, and an executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1998 instructs federal agencies to give preference to bio-based products on the conditions that they are available, meet the performance requirements and priced reasonably, as part of an environmentally friendly initiative.
 
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