Avacta Group Regulatory News (AVCT)

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group")

Avacta and Pall Life Sciences extend Optim distribution relationship to India

Deal marks Avacta's entry to the third largest Asian-Pacific biotech market

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 signed its third agreement with Pall Corporation (NYSE:PLL) ("Pall"), a global leader in filtration, separation and purification. This latest agreement between the two Companies is to sell and distribute Avacta's market leading protein drug development tool "Optim" in India and follows on from the North American and South East Asian agreements which were signed in June and October last year.

This development adds India to Pall's existing collaboration agreement, which already gives Pall 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.

According to The Economic Times, India's leading business publication, the Indian biopharma industry experienced a three-fold growth in the five years leading up to 2010. This growth level appears to be continuing with reports from the likes of the 9th Annual BioSpectrum-Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE) suggesting that 2010 - 2011 represented the best year yet for India's biotechnology industry.

Alastair Smith, Chief Executive of Avacta Group commented: "I am delighted to announce that we have successfully signed another exclusive agreement with Pall. Pall have proven to be an excellent partner for Avacta and the success of our existing collaborations with Pall in North America and South East Asia have been a major factor in our decision to choose Pall as the sole distributor for Optim in India. We are very excited by the opportunities available in India and are now looking forward to working with Pall in this new territory."

Ken Frank, Senior Vice President of Pall Corporation and President of Pall's Biopharmaceutical Division commented: "This extension of our collaboration with Avacta in India complements our ForteBio technology and other initiatives, while adding to Pall's capability to provide high value, differentiated solutions to the developers and manufacturers of biomolecules for global healthcare needs."

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Notes to Editors:

Avacta Group plc, is a UK based healthcare technology, reagents and consumables company, providing innovative tools to help reduce the costs of drug development and to improve diagnostics.

Avacta's products address one of the most significant global challenges facing mankind today - the rapidly rising cost of healthcare for a growing and ageing population.

The cost of healthcare is driven by many factors. New drugs are expensive to develop, most don't reach the patient and those that do are often very costly to prescribe. Inadequate, incorrect or slow diagnosis causes delays that lead to longer or less effective courses of treatment resulting in lengthy or repeated hospitalization.

Avacta is dedicated to developing and providing innovative and practical tools to help drug developers get their products to market quicker and more reliably, and to providing clinicians with rapid and powerful diagnostics to improve patient treatment, helping to reduce the cost of healthcare worldwide.

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

For further information visit www.avacta.com