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Danzas Starts E-Business Project with NextLinx for Industrial Branch of Organizaci󮠔echint [Spanish version]

Total landed costs of products to be accurately calculated in quoting process, allowing for educated purchasing decisions by procurement managers

Basel, Switzerland (February 20, 2001) -- Danzas has selected NextLinx Corporation, a leading global trade management solutions provider, for its landed cost and compliance solutions in a pilot project. It is designed to support the procurement and logistics processes of the Industrial Branch of Organizaci󮠔echint, an Italo-Argentinian multi-national group that manages flat steel, steel tubes and specialty steel products manufacturing plants around the world. NextLinx's Trade Engines will support the quoting phase of the procurement process, using transportation costs determined by Danzas. By automating and simplifying the procurement process, Exiros, Techint's on-line industrial procurement services subsidiary, will be able to compare bids from different vendors and select the best bid based not just on the total cost of the product, but based on the total landed cost of the product, including transportation, insurance and all import charges, including duty, excise, value added tax and governmental charges.

Using XML, the Exiros procurement solution will access the Trade Engines for landed cost and compliance at NextLinx's Global TradePlace', its collaborative environment for managing global trade over the Internet. NextLinx's Trade Engines uses the regulatory content in Global Knowledge?, the industry's most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information for landed costs and government trade regulations for shipping products from any country to any country, representing more than 98 percent of the world trade market. Setting the standard for global trade management, NextLinx's Global Knowledge supplies information on current trade regulations, all duties and governmental charges, documentation and landed costs for all product classifications for each country, including all chapters of the Harmonized System (HS) with an average of 99 chapters and 19,000 classifications for each country.

"Here we see how the old economy can adopt new technologies and make them work," said Renato Chiavi, member of Group Management and Head of Intercontinental Business Unit of Danzas. "Most of the electronic marketplaces were started up with much too little understanding of how to add value through logistics - and many of them seem to go out of business. In Techint we have a mature business partner applying proven business processes, knowing how important logistics information is for sound purchasing decisions. By combining the expertise of Danzas and NextLinx, logistics services become an integral part of the Exiros electronic marketplace."

"We are very pleased with the vote of confidence given to us by Danzas, and are pleased to offer our landed cost and compliance solutions to the one of the largest online industrial procurement services providers in the world," said Rajiv Uppal, chairman and CEO of NextLinx. "Our combined solution will improve the procurement processes, allowing procurement managers to make informed decisions based on the total landed cost of the product during the reverse auction quoting phase, before the purchase transaction is completed."

"Our global procurement and logistics operations have become extremely complex over the past few years," said Paolo Bassetti, Corporate Procurement Director of Techint's Industrial Branch. "That is why we created Exiros, an on-line industrial procurement services subsidiary that will help us simplify the complexity of regional procurement operations by providing cutting-edge IT tools such as the one being developed by NextLinx for us. We plan to make these tools available to our entire trading community, and to other industrial concerns in the region who are focused on continuous improvement of their procurement cycle."

About NextLinx Corporation
NextLinx Corporation is a leading global trade management solution provider, founded in 1994 by Rajiv Uppal and headquartered in Silver Spring, MD. NextLinx powers global trade for any business by simplifying and accelerating the buying, selling and shipping of products globally. NextLinx offers Global TradePlace, a Web-based collaborative environment for managing global trade, Global Knowledge, the most comprehensive global trade content available, and Global Manager, its product suite designed to meet the needs of any business. NextLinx solutions allow users to calculate total landed costs, comply with governmental trade regulations and execute export and import logistics, instantaneously from any location via the Internet. NextLinx has developed a reputation for technical leadership, reliability and client satisfaction. NextLinx's prestigious list of customers includes FedEx, Cisco Systems, 3Com, Fairchild Semiconductor, Rockwell Automation, Quantum, Sotheby's, ShipChem, Boeing and Qualcomm. Additional information about NextLinx can be obtained at www.nextlinx.com.

About Exiros and Techint
Exiros is a service company, whose mission is to increase the effectiveness of the industrial value chains of Latin America and the countries that trade with the region by providing a suite of integrated industrial procurement services. It is a spin-off of the Industrial Branch of Organizaci󮠔echint, an important multinational conglomerate of Italo-Argentine origin with significant operations in the steel, oil & gas, infrastructure engineering and construction industries, among others. The founding vision was to capture all of Organizaci󮠔echint's know-how on industrial procurement, which has been developed for the past 50 years, and to offer it as a shared service to the companies of the Group and to other industrial concerns in the region.

Logistics. Worldwide. With a strong presence on every continent, the Danzas Group is the world's leading provider of logistics solutions. Its 38,000 employees worldwide generate annual net sales of CHF 11.4 billion (EUR 7.1 billion, USD 7.5 billion). Danzas is based in Basel, Switzerland, and belongs to the Deutsche Post World Net.

For further information please contact:
Patrick Kaiser
Head of Corporate Communications
TL: +41 61 274 7181
Fax: +41 61 274 7198
E-mail: patrick.kaiser@danzas.com

Candace Bouchard
Manager, Corporate Communications, Americas
TL: +1 203 655 5792
Fax: +1 203 655 5985
E-mail: exocb@aeilogis.com

Marci Maged
For NextLinx
TL: +1 202 912 4449
Fax: +1 202 466 8883
E-mail: mmaged@fitzgerald.com