State Environment Benefit Seen From Quantum Group Joint Venture
27 March 2000
Major State Environment Benefit Seen From Quantum Group Joint Venture With California Department of Corrections to Train Prisoners in Waste Tire Recycling
TUSTIN, Calif--March 27, 2000--Inmates At Donovan Correctional Facility Producing Marketable Products
While Reducing California Waste Tire Stream
The Quantum Group Inc. (OTCBB:QTMG), a leading global recycler of used automobile and truck tires, will expand production of new products destined for the California market manufactured from scrap California tires as the result of a successful six-month introductory trial of its proprietary technology at the J. Richard Donovan Correctional Facility at Rock Mountain, San Diego, Quantum's President and Chief Executive Officer, Ehrenfried Liebich, announced today.
The Quantum Group, which exhibited its QCAL subsidiary's patented waste tire recycling technology March 15-18 at the California Parks & Recreation Society exposition in Ontario, Calif., is receiving favorable response from public agencies and state vendors for its recycled rubber products.
Under a three-year joint venture agreement signed by the company's QCAL subsidiary with the California Department of Corrections Sacramento Joint Venture Program, which was inaugurated on Sept. 22, 1999, The Quantum Group's QCAL Inc. subsidiary began educating and training minimum security inmates in the environmentally and socially significant waste tire recycling industry.
The company is installing a tire shredder, which will reduce whole tires down to small pieces, which will then be fed into a granulator, which will remove the fabric and steel and reduce the tire pieces to various sizes of crumb rubber, typically from .5 to four millimeters. Over the next several months, The Quantum group will add a continuous roll sheeting mechanism and its patented REVULCON(R) revulcanizing machine. REVULCON(R) is a proprietary technology that partially devulcanizes rubber, allowing it to be re-vulcanized and used for new products, including the manufacture of new tires. Currently operating onsite is QCAL's flat press, fabricating playground tiles for parks and recreation facilities, athletic flooring for gyms and sports venues, and rubber mats for cattle and horse barns, and other products.
The Quantum Group, by creating a new employment activity for minimum security correctional inmates during incarceration at the facility, enables inmates to obtain specialized experience in environmental technology, thus maximizing their employment opportunities in society. Whole California auto and truck tires are shredded and granulated into different sizes in a processing plant employing up to 20 inmates in a 10,000 square foot building outside the maximum security fence, in which, using Quantum's unique Eco-press technology, between three and four thousand tons annually of a wide range of marketable products are manufactured from crumb rubber.
The company's patented Supercollider processes rubber buffings into superfine material and Quantum Group's patented Revulcon (R) process partially devulcanizes rubber, allowing it to be revulcanized for many applications including an additive for new tire production, enabling The Quantum Group's entry into the $70 billion (USD) worldwide tire manufacturing industry.
The Quantum Group is conducting a feasibility study prior to constructing a full-scale recycling plant on a 100,000 square foot parcel of land to be made available inside the prison grounds, modeled on the company's 16,000 ton-capacity, two-shift Poseidon plant currently under construction near Berlin, Germany.
The Quantum Group has both completed and pending contracts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The Quantum Group is headquartered at Park Irvine Business Center, 14771 Myford Road, Building B, Tustin, Calif. 82780. Telephone: 800/660-3734 and Fax: 714/508-1475. The company's Web site is http://www.tqginc.com or www.qgusa.com and E-mail address is info@tqginc.com.
The foregoing press release contains forward-looking statements. For this purpose any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, words such as "may", "will," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," or "continue," or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements by their nature involve substantial risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially depending on a variety of factors.