Doug Arnett, Director at Quality Connections (Credit: Jake Bacon/ Arizona Daily Sun)
Quality Connections has won a “sole-supplier” contract to supply the state of Arizona with remanufactured toner cartridges.
AZ Daily Sun reported that the company, which is based in Flagstaff and is “one of [the] leading employers of the disabled and disadvantaged”, won the contract and can expect to make around $5 million (€3.6 million) a year in sales, with additional business possible with cities, counties and schools throughout the state.
The company noted that around $500,000 (€364,837) of the total it expects to make will be from sales of remanufactured toner cartridges alone, with the non-profit organisation already able to offer around 100,000 products – plus 40 different types of remanufactured cartridge – and having provided remanufactured cartridges to the state “for the last seven or eight years through the state’s set-aside contracting programme”.
This programme “give companies that provide jobs or job training for people with disabilities, the disadvantaged or the incarcerated special consideration for state contracts”, with the company offering a “variety of residential and day treatment” as well as vocational and employment services for disabled people.
Doug Arnett, Office Director for Quality Connections, noted that “in doing so we create more possibilities for people who need it […] most states and the federal government have set-aside contract programs like this”. However, this contract makes the company the “sole provider” of remanufactured cartridges to state offices, with the option to “renew the contract every year” for up to five years.
Arnett added: “I think this is the first such set-aside contract in the state. Our challenge is to get more state offices using these refurbished cartridges […] we’re adding more to the list, we’ve got four new lines going in.”
The contract will also allow the company to add 20 jobs, and it currently employs 100 people, with a new office planned for the city of Phoenix. Arnett noted that “most of the employees work for the company for only a short time”, with the goal to “assess a client’s skills and then provide them with the training and help they need to hold a professional job”.
Arnett also spoke of the company’s mission to promote remanufactured cartridges alongside other “environmentally sustainable products” and electronics recycling. He noted: “It takes about three and a half quarts of oil to create one toner cartridge. But what’s most important to me is that we’re helping people who need it the most. I like to say that we’re turning tax consumers into tax payers.”