Issue of Equity

Avacta Group plc                                

                                    Placing                                    

       Issue of Equity, Directors Dealing and related party transaction.       

Avacta Group plc ("Avacta" or "the Company"), the biophysics company which
provides innovative high value technologies and services to the pharmaceutical
and diagnostics markets, announces that it has raised £1.38 million (before
expenses) from a conditional placing of new ordinary shares of 0.1 pence each
("New Ordinary Shares") at a price of 1.0 pence per Ordinary Share (the
"Placing"). In addition, the Company has issued 4,925,000 new Ordinary Shares
in part payment of certain fees in connection with the Placing. The New
Ordinary Shares have been placed by XCAP with institutional and other existing
and new shareholders pursuant to a Placing agreement, which contains the usual
warranties in favour of XCAP and the Company's nominated adviser, Grant
Thornton Corporate Finance.

Use of Proceeds & Strategy

The cash proceeds of the Placing, will be used to take Avacta from its current
position, towards its near term goal of being a profitable business providing
products and services to support the life sciences sector.

Since joining AIM in late 2006 Avacta has achieved its stated milestones by
delivering products and services and establishing routes to market through two
operating businesses; Avacta Analytical and Avacta Animal Health, in its target
markets of drug development and diagnostics. The Company has announced the
first sales of its first product, Optim, which is designed to significantly
reduce risk and cost in the biopharmaceutical drug development process. Four
units have now been ordered, the latest to a global biomanufacturing systems
supplier. Whilst the order intake in the current difficult economic climate has
been slower than hoped for, the pipeline of validated enquiries is very
encouraging and the Company is confident of seeing this strong interest in the
product convert to accelerating sales over the coming months. Conversion of the
Optim sales pipeline is Avacta Analytical's foremost objective and this is
being addressed by recent additions to the in-house commercial team and
distributor agreements close to finalisation.

In addition, the Company is expected to launch its first diagnostic product,
Midas, into the veterinary healthcare market in the near term. The Midas system
will be capable of delivering a wide menu of rapid diagnostic blood tests
offering both quantitative and qualitative analysis to the veterinary and, in
due course, human healthcare markets.

The funds raised will be used to support commercialisation of these new
analytical and diagnostics products through improvements in infrastructure and
manufacturing processes and through the enhancement of the Company's commercial
teams. In addition, the implementation of a product placement/consumables
contract for some customers is expected to accelerate the growth of the high
margin, recurring revenues from consumables sales.

Director Dealings

Pursuant to the Placing, certain Directors of the Company have subscribed for
5,000,000 new Ordinary Shares in aggregate. Details of the Directors'
subscriptions and resultant holdings are listed in the table below:

Director           No of Placing      Number of shares on Percentage of Issued 
                   shares subscribed  Admission           Share Capital on     
                   for                                    Admission            
                                                                               
Alastair Smith     1,500,000          51,728,296          3.61%                
                                                                               
Gwyn Humphreys     2,000,000          16,659,169          1.16%                
                                                                               
Tim Sykes          1,500,000          5,285,384           0.37%                

The subscription for New Ordinary Shares by the Directors is a related party
transaction as defined by Rule 13 of the AIM Rules for Companies. Accordingly
the Directors, having consulted with the Company's nominated adviser, consider
that the terms of the subscription by the Directors are fair and reasonable in
so far as the Company's shareholders as a whole are concerned.

Pursuant to the Placing, IP Group plc ("IP Group") through IP2IPO Limited, will
subscribe for 75,000,000 New Ordinary Shares at the Placing Price. Following
Admission, IP Group will be interested in 360,384,828 ordinary shares,
representing 25.13 per cent, of the Company's issued share capital on
Admission. As IP Group is a substantial shareholder in the Company, the
subscription for New Ordinary Shares by IP Group constitutes a related party
transaction as defined by Rule 13 of the AIM Rules for Companies. Accordingly,
the Directors, having consulted with the Company's nominated adviser, consider
that the terms of the subscription by IP Group are fair and reasonable in so
far as the Company's shareholders as a whole are concerned.

Admission to trading and Total Voting Rights

Application has been made for the 143,425,000 new Ordinary Shares to be
admitted to trading on the AIM market of London Stock Exchange plc and dealings
are expected to commence on 9 July 2010. The New Ordinary Shares will rank pari
passu with existing shares in issue. Following the Placing, Avacta's issued
share capital comprises 1,434,343,139 ordinary shares of par value 0.1 pence
each with voting rights. No ordinary shares are held in treasury.

The above figure of 1,434,343,139 shares may be used by shareholders as the
denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are
required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in the
Company under the FSA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

                                                                    6 July 2010

For further information, please contact:

Avacta Group plc                              Tel: [phone]             
                                                                             
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer       www.avacta.com                 
                                                                             
Tim Sykes, Chief Financial Officer                                           
                                                                             
Broker                                        Tel: [phone]             
                                                                             
XCAP Securities Limited                       www.xcapgroup.com              
                                                                             
John Grant/Karen Kelly/David Newton           Tel: [phone]             
                                                                             
Nominated Adviser                             www.grantthornton.co.uk        
                                                                             
Grant Thornton Corporate Finance                                             
                                                                             
Philip Secrett/Colin Aaronson                                                
                                                                             
Financial PR                                  Tel: [phone]             
                                                                             
Haggie Financial LLP                                                         
                                                                             
Nicholas Nelson/ Henny Breakwell              [e-mail]   

Notes to Editors:

About Avacta

Avacta was spun-out from the University of Leeds in 2004 by its current
management team as a biophysics company, with the aim of combining the
disciplines of physics and biology to develop innovative technologies and
expert technical services to address unmet needs in the biopharmaceutical and
healthcare sectors. Avacta has a core bio-analytical technology development
programme addressing the needs of the biopharmaceutical sector to fully
characterise their new products at the earliest stage in their development to
reduce the risk of late stage failure. High end analytical instruments and
leading edge contract research services are being provided to the
biopharmaceutical and healthcare/personal-care materials sectors through
Avacta's biotech support division, Avacta Analytical. High value solutions for
rapid, point of care diagnostics based on these core bio-analytical
technologies, with a near term focus on veterinary diagnostics, are being
delivered through Avacta Animal Health. Longer term these technologies will be
transferred into the human clinical diagnostics market. Avacta listed on AIM in
August 2006.