Arborex Introduces eBusiness System Designed to Reduce Costs in $123 Billion Paperboard Industry.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2000

Arborex, Inc. announced the development of an electronic trading environment for the paperboard industry. Arborex provides a neutral, third party forum that reduces the costs of relationships and creates more efficient supply chains. It is an optimized platform for conducting all aspects of business within the solid fiber and corrugated products industry -- a $123 billion industry segment according to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

The Arborex transaction environment naturally streamlines the procurement process, substantially reducing costs for buyers without impacting the profitability of sellers. Although developed to allow buyers to order paperboard products to exact specifications, the company's Internet-based model benefits buyers and sellers across the entire supply chain. It enables faster communication with fewer errors by providing a seamless online transaction environment.

"We're building a comprehensive solution that links and benefits all parties in the industry -- from packaging consumers to converters to mills," said company President Andrew Dailey. "It offers buyers and sellers the ability to lower costs, expand reach and improve visibility into supply and demand dynamics. And it can be tightly integrated with a company's internal information technology. We want to dramatically improve the way the industry does business."

Arborex offers buyers and sellers a secure, dynamic, transaction-based trading environment with easy-to-use tools. For buyers it simplifies complex transactions while enabling a quicker time-to-market for products. It improves sellers' efficiency by freeing them from unproductive tasks and enabling the seamless transfer of information. The Arborex platform also empowers all parties to better match needs with capabilities and more accurately match demand to capacity. In short, it is a system that cuts costs not prices.

"The Arborex model eliminates process inefficiencies across the entire value chain and creates a powerful network effect -- at a very low incremental cost," said Norma Pace, president of Paper Analytics, an economic research and advisory firm. "It complements the growing number of eProcurement systems created by business to improve cost, delivery and working capital uses and facilitates the collection of data needed to maximize the efficiency of these new systems. It is a customer-driven system that can increase demand. Its neutrality also catalyzes full-market participation, which enables real-time supply and demand trends analysis. This can dramatically improve production and inventory planning, establish orderly market clearing prices and increase liquidity. It's also important to recognize that Arborex does not intend to run a bid engine, surplus product exchange or spot auction that forces price competition at the expense of quality."

About Arborex

Arborex maintains corporate offices in Chicago, IL, and development facilities in Redwood City, CA. The company is a business-to-business eCommerce (B2B EC) service and solution provider with a vertical focus on streamlining the solid fiber and corrugated paperboard industry, targeting more than $10 billion in industry-wide cost reductions. Arborex is funded by an international group of institutional investors, and its board of directors and advisory panel are comprised of well-known industry leaders.