Plexus Regulatory News (POS)

Plexus Holdings PLC / Index: AIM / Epic: POS / Sector: Oil equipment & services

16 August 2011

Plexus Holdings PLC ('Plexus' or 'the Company')

Director/PDMR Shareholdings

Plexus Holdings PLC, the AIM quoted oil and gas engineering services business and owner of the proprietary POS-GRIP® friction-grip method of wellhead engineering, announces that Mutual Holdings Ltd* ('Mutual'), advised on 15 August 2011, that it has entered into an arrangement with Barclays Private Bank & Trust Limited ('Barclays'), whereby Mutual has pledged ordinary shares in the Company to the value of £20m to be used as security for the provision of a flexible loan facility from Barclays. Mutual has advised Plexus that the £2m flexible loan (which has not yet been drawn down in whole or in part) has been secured on the appropriate number of the Company's shares at a ratio of 10:1. At the closing share price on 15 August 2011 of 55p per share, if the loan was drawn down in full, approximately 36,363,636 out of the 60,000,001 shares held by Mutual would be secured.

It is the Company's understanding that Mutual has chosen to arrange this facility rather than sell shares at the current Market price due to the strong progress Plexus is making, and in view of the significant commercial opportunities that it is hoped will evolve from its recently announced new "HGSS" friction grip subsea wellhead design project which is anticipated to be ready for deployment in Q3 2012. The Company understands that (partly as a result of the current uncertainty in financial markets) Mutual believes that this progress has yet to be reflected in the Company's share price. Mutual plans to utilise these funds to facilitate further investments by entities associated with the van Bilderbeek family.

* Ben van Bilderbeek, Director, is one of the beneficiaries of a trust which controls 70.875% of the shares of Mutual Holdings Limited. 

**ENDS**

For further information please visit www.posgrip.com or contact:

Notes to Editors:

Plexus Holdings PLC, which began trading on AIM in December 2005, is an oil and gas engineering and services business, which supplies wellhead and mudline suspension equipment for exploration and production applications. Based in Aberdeen, with offices in London, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur and a presence in Houston, Texas, it has developed and patented a friction-grip method of engineering for oil and gas field wellheads and connectors, POS-GRIP®, which involves deforming one tubular member against another to effect gripping and sealing. 

The Company plans to accelerate the roll out of POS-GRIP wellhead equipment as a superior alternative to current technology and for it to become the future industry standard for wellhead design. In particular, the technology has advantages in High Pressure/High Temperature (HP/HT) and Extreme HP/HT (X-HP/HT) oil and gas environments, for which there is growing global demand and where Plexus is being increasingly recognised as the supplier of choice. Importantly, the Company is focussed on extending its proprietary technology into an increasing number of subsea applications. In line with this, in March 2011 the Company launched an initiative to develop a new subsea wellhead design, HGSS™, utilising its friction-grip technology in collaboration with key oil and gas operators and service companies. The HGSS subsea wellhead design will include a combination of key features never before seen in a subsea wellhead which include being rated to 15,000 psi, 4,000,000 pounds of 'instant' casing lockdown capacity, annulus pressure monitoring and access for 'bleed off' capability to address sustained casing pressure ('SCP') issues which are recognised by the API as a serious industry problem, and rigid metal annular seal technology qualified to match the performance of premium casing.  Field trials of HGSS are targeted for deployment Q3 2012. 

To date, POS-GRIP wellhead systems have been used or selected to be used in over 150 oil and gas wells by international companies including Apache Energy Australia, BHP Billiton, BG International, Bowleven plc, BP, Brunei Shell Petroleum, Cairn Energy, Centrica, ConocoPhillips, Dana Petroleum, Dubai Petroleum, GDF SUEZ, Global Santa Fe, Maersk, Niko Resources, Petro-Canada Trinidad & Tobago, Red Sea Petroleum Operating Company, Repsol, RWE, Senergy Limited, Shell Egypt, StatoilHydro, Silverstone Energy, Talisman Energy, Tullow Oil, and Wintershall.