FIRST PLANT MANAGER OF BIOKYOWA, JOE GAMBILL, RETIRES AFTER 9 YEARS

Joseph F. Gambill, who has served as plant manager of Biokyowa Inc. since the L-Lysine manufacturing plant opened in Nash Road Industrial Park in 1984, has retired.

"I'm going to relax, play some golf, do some woodworking and add to my rock collections," said Gambill from his home this week.

Gambill and his wife collect a number of rocks, including minerals and fossils.

Gambill was no stranger to Cape Girardeau when he returned here in 1983 to accept the position at Biokyowa.

"I was plant manager at Marquette Cement from 1971 to 1981," he said. "I worked in California the next couple of years until I was contacted about the Biokyowa job."

Gambill, a mining engineer, first came to Cape Girardeau in May of 1971 as manager of the Marquette plant.

"I had worked in the Bahamas refurbishing a cement plant, as manager of Bahamas Cement," he said. "Later, I was manager of the Dixie Lime and Stone Co. plant in Ocala, Fla."

Gambill, a graduate of the Wisconsin Institute of Technology, as a mining engineer, spent much of the first two years of his career underground.

"I worked for the Gypsum Co., of Gypsum, Ohio, straight out of college," he said. "I was working with gypsum and crushed stone, and a lot of my time was spent underground."

He then worked in management with the Penn-Dixie Cement Corp. for a dozen years.

Gambill started working for Biokyowa about nine months before the plant opened.

"A friend of mine at the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce put me in touch with Biokyowa officials, and they hired me in August of 1983," he said.

Gambill said he would remain active in the chamber. He has served on the group's board of directors, and on the industrial relations council. "I will also continue to serve as a Biokyowa consultant on community and environmental affairs," said Gambill.

Biokyowa is a subsidiary company of Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co., Tokyo, Japan, a leading company in the fermentation field. The Tokyo firm invented amino acid fermentation, which creates the product, L-Lysine.

Gambill and his wife, Rosemary, are parents of five children, with four of them living in the Cape Girardeau area.