Avacta Group plc - Optim sales momentum growing

27 Oct 2010

Avacta Group plc ("Avacta" or the "Company"), the company providing innovative, high value technologies and services to the pharmaceutical and diagnostics markets, is pleased to announce an order from the world's largest biopharmaceutical developer for an Optim 1000 system. Optim is the Company's analytical technology, designed to reduce risk in biopharmaceutical development and help drug companies bring their products to market quicker and at lower cost. For competitive reasons, the name of the customer cannot be disclosed.

Optim fills a significant gap in the market by providing detailed analysis using only very small sample volumes. For the first time this enables drug developers to gain vital information about product performance in the earliest stages of product development, when very limited quantities of material are available, helping to reduce the risk of later stage failure.

This latest order, which brings the total number of orders to six with three units installed and a further unit due to ship within weeks, was secured by Isogen the recently appointed European distributor. The Company has recently seen a significant increase in validated sales leads for Optim in the US and Europe following several successful trade shows, and a sharp rise in the number of customers sending test samples to evaluate Optim as part of their purchasing process.

In order to drive sales in the key US market, Avacta has also agreed to place Optim units into two prestigious biopharmaceutical research laboratories at the Universities of Kansas and Colorado. Both universities interact extensively on a commercial level with the biopharmaceutical sector in the US and are highly influential in this sector. These units will be applied to commercial projects and to training scientists from US biopharmaceutical companies and will rapidly raise the profile of Optim and as such will be highly valuable assets generating sales leads and reference cases for Optim in the US market.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive, Avacta Group, commented: "This latest Optim order from the world's biggest biopharmaceutical developer is clearly an important sale and potentially the first of several to this customer. I am particularly pleased that by running a short evaluation of Optim for the customer using their test samples the sale was quickly secured, which is a strong indictment of the value proposition of Optim. This, and the sharp increase we have seen recently in customers sending or arranging to send test samples to evaluate the product, is an encouraging indication of gathering momentum in the commercialization of Optim."

For further information, please contact:
Avacta Group plc                 Tel:  0844 414 0452            
Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer  www.avacta.com                  
Tim Sykes, Chief Financial Officer                                                         
Broker - XCAP Securities Plc     Tel: 020 7101 7070             
John Grant/Karen Kelly/David Newton                                                           
NOMAD - Grant Thornton           Tel: 020 7383 5100             
Corporate Finance                                               
Philip Secrett/Colin Aaronson                                    
PR - NexFin                                                     
Nicholas Nelson                  Tel: 07921 522 920

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 the Group'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 joined AIM in August 2006.

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