FCS3

Section 2 Methodology

• A spreadsheet identifying contact information (name, address, phone, email, if available) on all identified California rubber and plastics manufacturers, along with gathered information, and identification of priorities. • Purchased Lists (unknown yet)

2B. Conduct Outreach to Manufacturers and Secure Commitments

Objective: Identify firms meeting the RFP and TIP criteria who verbally (at this stage) commit to participate in the program and to pursue feedstock conversion objectives. Based on guidance provided at the kickoff meeting and embodied in the approved Work Plan, the Project Manager will most likely recommend to the Contract Manager using a similar two to four-page digital announcement and the hard copy pdf version similar to what was used in the previous FCS. Subject to discussion with CalRecycle, we envision the announcement to include potential benefits of tire rubber; information on the availability of crumb rubber; a short description of available funding and links to CalRecycle information and the California Tire-Derived Product Catalog. The budget in Task 2 will be directed toward finding five to seven manufacturers based on the contract timeline to research, design, develop, test, certify and manufacturer a commercial product. Every intent will be to find manufacturers that would use higher volumes of crumb rubber. Our experience has shown that there is a need for lengthy and repeated phone conversations with manufacturers before they are able to make a commitment to feedstock conversion, and that it is far more effective to work closely with a few strong candidates than to spend a small amount of time with many candidates. Taking these considerations into account, we have budgeted under Task 2B to focus outreach on an estimated 20 candidates (based on available information), with the goal of identifying four to six final feedstock conversion firms to receive services under the FCS program. The pool of experienced users in crumb rubber are not to be the focus of this contract and therefore will require initially an information and sales approach to find interested manufacturers that our team believes would be viable candidates. Based on our team’s experience, we know that there will be a steep learning curve for the manufacturers that have not used tire rubber previously with a very short window. If the technical and material testing incentives are high enough and the manufacturers have the time and interest in learning about the benefits, we believe our team will find some interested manufacturers to participate in this FCS. We learned during the previous FCS contractors that the manufacturers who were experienced in working with crumb rubber spent far more time, money and personnel than anticipated in trying to develop a feedstock conversion product during a nine-month timetable. After our efforts through phone, emails and distributing the digital and hard copy brochure, we will qualify the more interested manufacturers by asking them to complete a candidate questionnaire. That questionnaire was a great time-saver in the previous FCS because it helped us to understand how much they knew about what they wanted to accomplish; what they knew about tire rubber; and the particle size they thought they needed; and rather they qualified on a financial level. After the selection of the more qualified manufacturers, we would then visit the companies as identified in 2C to validate their interest and go into more detail about what would be expected of them as a manufacturer, their needs for technical, material testing and regulatory and/or certification before the product could be sold commercially. We will track the outcomes of our phone conversations in a spreadsheet.

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