Today, Porex Corporation employs over 700 people around the world and serves over 1,300 customers in 65 countries. Known as a porous materials industry leader and innovator, Porex parts and products are used in everything from consumer products such as childrens markers and home scent diffusers to medical and bioscience devices such as dialysis systems and DNA research equipment.It all began 50 years ago in a small building on Bay Street in Fairburn, Georgia.The roots of innovationIt was early 1961 when Mr. Bob Dickey, a research scientist, started a small business making sheet material out of various polymers to be used in a caustic fluid separation process. The porous plastics industry was in its infancy: Mr. Dickey and his two employees refined sintered porous plastics for commercial production purposes.Shortly after incorporation of Porex Materials Corporation on April 27, 1961, Mr. Dickey and his employees applied the technology they had developed to making porous plastic nibs for writing instruments. They produced a line of products under the PORX brand name, with sales reaching $1 million in 1968.The unique properties of porous plastics materials combined with the groundbreaking design and engineering expertise of Porex employees fostered multiple applications serving increasingly diverse industries through the years. In 1971, Porex acquired a small start-up company, UniChem, which had an idea for producing an improved filter for blood serum that contained a porous plastic filter. This product, which is marketed as the POREX FILTER SAMPLER Blood Serum Filter, quickly became the industry standard and today remains the most widely used manual serum filter.In later years, markets for a broad range of porous plastic products such as battery flame arrestors, pneumatic filters, mufflers, water filtration components, and medical components kept the company growing at a rapid rate. In 1989 the Company expanded into Europe, followed by additional European and Asian ex