SAN ANTONIO, Texas - April 16, 2007 - MDI, Inc., the leading provider of Unified Technology solutions for the security industry today announced that it has been awarded an initial purchase order to provide its security technology and systems to track cargo and transportation worker activity between selected free trade zones and a major port within the Dominican Republic. MDI was chosen by the Red Nacional De Transporte Terreste (RNTT) and the Dominican security integration firm ID Corp., SA to participate in this project. Once this initial order has been successfully deployed, MDI expects to receive significant additional orders to provide its security technology and professional services to all of the ports and free trade zones in the Dominican Republic.
The RNTT, or National Transportation Network, is the official Dominican trade organization and it will be overseeing the transportation and cargo security projects for ports and free commerce zones within the Dominican Republic. Properties within the RNTT project scope today handle over 85% of the nation's cargo and include 13 of the largest Free Trade Zones within the country. There are currently over 100 free trade zones in the Dominican Republic and each comprises up to 45 tenant-manufacturing organizations, which include many global blue chip manufacturing companies. The national free trade zones include over 350,000 employees and 7,000 certified vehicles.
The RNTT program will also extend to commercial organizations within the country that manufacture, process or ship products. When complete, each organization and global commercial partner within the RNTT is designed to become part of the national MDI platform, which will control multiple forms of data including photographs, fingerprints and critical ID information. The system will link partner companies and empower them to track shipment status, make necessary adjustments and perform a variety of other access, video & security related functions in real time.
ID Corp. SA is spearheading the identity & security component of RNTT, which was designed and supported in part by the Dominican Government, the US Embassy, the US Coast Guard, the World Commerce Organization and the World BASC Organization as a secure commerce project focused on cargo and chauffer authentication and tracking. It was created to establish a trusted and automated transportation information network in support of RD-CAFTA (Republica Dominicana - Central American Free Trade Agreement), whose goal is to deliver more established infrastructures, shorter distribution routes and lower transportation costs to the United States than current trade zone locations across the world.
"MDI was the natural selection for this complex, far-reaching and very important national security project," stated Raul Flamini, President of ID Corp, SA. "No other company in the security industry has the scalability and customized capabilities required to tackle a mega-project of this size and scope. The time and cost for system modifications by other manufacturers would have made this project impossible to complete in the timeframe required. For nearly two years, MDI worked with us through each step of the sales and engineering demonstration process. Their open architecture technology has made this project a reality for us and their ability to provide custom solutions for enterprise-level projects is un-matched in the industry," he concluded.
There is great political oversight on this program from the USA, Mexico and other Latin American governments seeking similar solutions to existing trade barriers. The US Ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been one of the RNTT program's biggest endorsers, on behalf of the potential of the program to streamline trade, decrease container screening requirements and add efficiencies to total transit time and costs. It is the ambassador's goal to provide the most geographically desirable manufacturing supply chain for the United States.
"In regards to data collection and management reporting, the potential long-term scale of this program is unprecedented and could rival the largest deployments ever undertaken by any access control manufacturer in history," stated J. Collier Sparks, CEO and President of MDI, Inc. "ID Corp is a very technical and accomplished integration firm. Raul and his team are an amazing group of technicians with the capabilities to take this high-profile system wherever RNTT officials would like it to go. We look forward to working with them through both MDI Security Systems and Global Systems Solutions to make this project an international success story," he added.
Established in 1990, ID Corp. SA., offers security products and integration services to organizations across the Dominican Republic and Latin America. The company provides many types of integrated solutions from the world's top manufacturers including CCTV, Access Control, Identification Systems, Biometrics, Alarm Management, Time & Attendance, Electronic Walls, Detection Products and Fire Systems. For more information on the company, visit www.idcorpsa.com.
MDI (NASDAQ: MDII) manufactures security technology solutions designed to protect people, facilities and assets. These solutions are unified by ONE Technology. ONE Technology unifies security point products, systems and subsystems into a common management platform. Far beyond the Integrated Security Management software promoted by industry competitors, ONE delivers an open architecture environment that adapts each individual application and device into its platform - promoting global collaboration as ONE system. The MDI product family currently protects over 8 million alarm points across the globe for many of the world's most recognized organizations including Microsoft, MBNA Worldwide, John Deere, Pepsi, FBI, TSA, Fidelity Investments, Bureau of Engraving & Printing, American Express, Department of Defense, IRS, Disney, Smithsonian Institution and MIT to name a few. For more information on MDI or its diversified line of security products, visit www.mdisecure.com.
