Versarien Regulatory News (VRS)

Versarien plc

("Versarien" or the "Group")

CEO to join GFirst board

Versarien plc (AIM: VRS), the advanced engineering materials group, announces today that its Chief Executive Officer Neill Ricketts has been appointed to the Board of GFirst Limited ("GFirst"), Gloucestershire's Economic Development Company. In addition to running a suite of projects in its own right, GFirst is the economic development arm of Gloucestershire County Council and the executive force behind the Local Economic Partnership ("LEP"), taking direction from the commercial sector lead provided by the LEP.

Established in 2011 by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to help determine local economic priorities and lead economic growth and job creation within a local area, LEP's are a voluntary partnership between local authorities and businesses. 

Commenting on his recent appointment, Neill Ricketts, Chief Executive Officer of Versarien plc, said: "I am delighted to have been asked to join the Board of GFirst and I look forward to offering my full support to Gloucestershire's LEP which covers the geographic region in which Versarien is based.

"GFirst's economic vision is to work with local business leaders to help promote the region to make it an area that by 2022 will have world class companies, a diverse business portfolio and a reputation for starting and growing successful businesses. Whilst my main focus remains on the day-to-day business development of Versarien, I hope that I can add value and business acumen to help GFirst achieve its strategic goals."

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Notes to Editors

Versarien develops advanced micro-porous metals for thermal management. The open celled metallic foams produced by the Group at its manufacturing factory in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, are 'biomimetic' - that is they mimic the sponge like structures of biological materials, e.g. bone and coral.

Versarien's porous metals have an exceptionally high surface area relative to volume which means they are ideally suited to any function where surface area is important, for example heat transfer, heat exchange, catalysis and energy storage. Versarien is initially targeting the thermal management industry due to the material's superb heat transfer properties. The thermal management market is expected to reach US$S11.1 billion during 2013 (Source: BCC Research).

The Group's lead product is VersarienCu, a micro-porous copper. When incorporated into liquid cooling systems, VersarienCu can improve efficiency by up to ten times. Versarien's key market is cooling systems for central processing units (CPUs), hardware that is found in high performance workstations (engineering, science, CGI, animation), computer clusters, supercomputing infrastructure and data centres. VersarienCu can be retrofitted into 'cold plates' within existing infrastructure and the Group also intends to produce complete cooling systems containing VersarienCu.