Anthony Ibarguen Named CEO of Water Firm Quench

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., Dec. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Anthony Ibarguen has been named Chief Executive Officer of Quench USA, Inc., where he is tasked with extending Quench's leadership position in the point-of-use water filtration market.

Ibarguen, a veteran CEO whose leadership positions have spanned venture capital-backed startups to Fortune 100 companies, said, "Quench has huge growth potential.  Not only do we offer our customers great value, but we also help the environment every time we replace a plastic bottle water cooler with one of our systems."

Quench Chairman Doug Brown commented, "We're excited to have an executive of Tony's caliber join our team.  He is the perfect person to build on the great job done by Dan Kuzmak, who helped put in place the infrastructure platform for Quench's continued growth."

Backed by clean technology private equity investors Element Partners and Virgin Green Fund, Quench has grown organically and through acquisition in 2010.  Element Managing Director Michael Bevan remarked, "Tony's experience in driving and managing growth is a great fit for us. We look forward to working with him to extend our leadership position in the bottleless water cooler market."

Evan Lovell, Managing Director from Virgin, added, "We see a large opportunity to capture share from the vast installed base of old bottled water coolers across the US.  Plastic jugs are both expensive and an environmental disaster, making Quench's value proposition compelling to most businesses."

Ibarguen is a resident of Villanova, PA, and holds degrees from Boston College and Harvard Business School.

About Quench

Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Quench USA, Inc. is a clean technology company with a corporate mission of replacing environmentally-unfriendly, plastic water bottles through the deployment of "bottleless" water filtration systems.  Bottleless water coolers are like miniature filtration plants, purifying a workplace's tap water.  The bottleless approach frees customers from high bills and the hassle of lifting and storing heavy, 5-gallon jugs. It also eliminates the ecological impact of using trucks to haul water around and storing water in plastic jugs, which end up in landfills.  Serving more than 25,000 customers with more than 50,000 systems, Quench has grown to become the largest bottleless water cooler company in North America.  Please visit www.quenchonline.com for more information.

About Element Partners

Element Partners is a CleanTech private equity fund dedicated to expansion and growth capital investments in leading companies providing innovative products and services that address environmental and resource challenges in the energy, water, materials, and manufacturing industries.  Founded in December, 2005, Element Partners has offices in Radnor, Pennsylvania and Menlo Park, California.  Additional information is available at www.elementpartners.com.

About Virgin Green Fund

Virgin Green Fund is a leading growth capital investor targeting companies in the renewable energy and resource efficiency sectors, primarily in the United States and Europe.  Virgin Green Fund seeks to help management teams increase the value of growth businesses by utilizing its equity, experience and global networks to help companies seize opportunities and solve problems.  In doing so, VGF works collaboratively with its portfolio companies, bringing to bear the operational expertise and financial acumen of the VGF Team to help management teams think critically about strategic issues such as market positioning, recruiting, acquisitions and financings.  Virgin Green Fund has been launched with the backing of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and a strong network of additional limited partners, and operates out of offices in London and San Francisco.  For more information, visit www.virgingreenfund.com.

SOURCE Quench USA, Inc.