South East Asian Alliance agreed with Pall

RNS Number : 5618P

Avacta Group PLC

05 October 2011

 



Press release

5 October 2011

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group")

Avacta and Pall Life Sciences agree South East Asian Alliance

Partnership to market Optim systems in the region

Avacta Group plc (AIM:AVCT), a leading provider of analytical and diagnostic technologies and services to the pharmaceutical and animal healthcare sectors, is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Pall Corporation (NYSE:PLL) ("Pall"), a global leader in filtration, separation and purification, to sell and distribute Avacta's market leading protein drug development tool "Optim" in South East Asia.  This agreement extends Avacta's commercial partnership with Pall, with whom the Group is already making good progress on sales and marketing of Optim in North America.

Under the terms of the extended collaboration, Pall will gain exclusive marketing and distribution rights to Optim, in a number of territories throughout the Pacific Rim including South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.  Singapore, home to Pall's 'Centre of Excellence', will also act as a central hub for Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Optim is an innovative technology that provides biopharmaceutical developers with information about the viability of their candidate drug molecules and formulations for R&D purposes and to optimise manufacturing.  Optim can provide this data very early in the drug development process thereby avoiding later stage costly product failures. 

The biopharma market for South East Asia is set for growth, with Singapore as a particular hotspot.  Several leading global pharmaceutical companies have recently announced significant investments to set up major biologics facilities in the region. The prospects for the South Korean bio-industry also look very promising due to strong government support and investments by international and regional businesses.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta Group commented: "We are delighted to expand our collaboration with Pall further and to benefit from their expertise and resources in the South East Asian market.  We are very pleased with the progress that Pall are making with Optim sales and marketing in North America and expect to see the same sort of progress in this new territory.  The strengthening of our commercial partnership with Pall through the development of a joint analytical services offering, that was recently announced, and potential to develop new products together is very important to Avacta and we anticipate that this will provide a strong platform for growth in this area of the Group's activities."

Ken Frank Senior Vice President of Pall Corporation and President of Pall's Biopharmaceutical Division commented: "The extension of our collaboration with Avacta in South East Asia complements our investments in this area and significantly furthers our capability to provide high value, differentiated solutions to the developers and manufacturers of biomolecules for global healthcare needs."

-Ends-

For further information please contact:

Avacta Group plc Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer	Tel:  [phone] www.avacta.com
Broker XCAP Securities plc John Grant/Karen Kelly	Tel:  [phone] www.xcapgroup.com
Nominated Adviser Grant Thornton Corporate Finance Philip Secrett/Colin Aaronson	Tel:  [phone] www.grantthornton.co.uk
Media Enquiries Abchurch Communications Sarah Hollins/Adam Michael/Oliver Hibberd [e-mail]	Tel: [phone] www.abchurch-group.com

Notes to Editors:

Avacta Group plc, a world leading, UK-based healthcare equipment and instrumentation business, provides innovative, high value proprietary technologies and services to the life sciences/healthcare sector through two operating divisions:

Avacta Analytical provides high-end analytical instrumentation and services to the biopharmaceutical sector, expected to be a $200bn revenues market by 2013 and the fastest growing part of the pharmaceutical industry. The Group's technologies are aimed at reducing the risks and expense associated with biological drug development and thereby reducing the final cost of drugs to patients. The Group's lead analytical instrument, Optim, is distributed through Pall Corporation in the US and South East Asia, Isogen Life Sciences in Europe, Cold Spring Biotech Corp in China and Taiwan and DKSH in Japan. Avacta sells Optim directly in the UK.

Avacta Animal Health provides diagnostic products and services for the $1.5bn global veterinary diagnostics market. Its aim is to equip veterinary professionals with high quality animal health and well-being information, through point-of-care diagnostics, reagents and testing kits and laboratory based testing. Avacta's AX-1 point of care immunoassay system is aimed at providing the veterinarian with rapid blood test results in the clinic. The initial range of tests launched with the AX-1 relates to Avacta's world leading allergy testing brand Sensitest®.Avacta is currently developing further assays for the AX-1 system to diagnose other diseases in companion animals. Longer-term this technology will be transferred into the human clinical diagnostics market.

Avacta joined AIM in August 2006 and is based in Wetherby, England.

About Pall Life Sciences

Pall Life Sciences provides cutting-edge products and services to meet the demanding needs of customers discovering, developing and producing biotech drugs, vaccines and classic pharmaceuticals. Pall technologies are also used to collect and process blood components and help protect patients from hospital-acquired infections.  The Company's membranes and membrane devices optimize detection and sample preparation in the drug research, clinical diagnostics, genomics, and proteomics markets.  Pall is a leading provider of separation systems and single-use filtration and purification technologies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to support faster development of new drugs and vaccines that are safer and require less energy and water to produce.

About Pall Corporation

Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) is a filtration, separation and purification leader providing solutions to meet the critical fluid management needs of customers across the broad spectrum of life sciences and industry. Pall works with customers to advance health, safety and environmentally responsible technologies. The Company's engineered products enable process and product innovation and minimize emissions and waste. Pall Corporation, with total revenues of $2.4 billion for fiscal 2010, is an S&P 500 company with more than 10,000 employees serving customers worldwide. To see how Pall is helping enable a greener, safer, more sustainable future, visit www.pall.com/green.

 

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