Taste Masking

News

13 September 2010

Commercial agreement with leading provider of outsourced services
to the health and beauty markets

Oxford Nutrascience has signed a non-exclusive commercial agreement for its Chewitab™ technology with DCC Health & Beauty Solutions Ltd., the leading provider of outsourced services to the health and beauty markets. Oxford Nutrascience will earn royalties on all Chewitab enabled products sold by DCC Health & Beauty Solutions in the UK and Ireland.

Under the terms of the open-ended agreement DCC Health & Beauty Solutions will license Oxford Nutrascience's technology for the manufacture and sale of chewable tablets. DCC Health & Beauty Solutions will have the ability to use Chewitab for an unlimited range of applications, including the production of healthcare supplements.

DCC Health & Beauty Solutions provides services to leading premium brand owners, mail order companies and global health and beauty retailers. Their customer base includes; Merck, GSK, Healthspan and Vitabiotics.

Chewitab is Oxford Nutrascience's proprietary technology used in chewable tablets. Chewitabs® produce a light crunch when bitten and dissolve quickly in the mouth resulting in a soft pleasant mouth feel with no grittiness and can be taken without water.

This key differentiator makes Chewitabs a highly convenient delivery system and particularly well suited for Over The Counter medicines (such as analgesics, allergy treatments, digestive aids) and medicines for the elderly as well as vitamins and supplements.

DCC Health & Beauty Solutions is part of DCC plc, a business support services group listed on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges with revenues of €6.7 billion. DCC Health & Beauty Solutions is a high growth business, driven by its proactive approach to new product development, its ability to react quickly to market dynamics and the quality of its MHRA licenced facilities. It provides services to the companies behind many of the most successful supplement brands on the shelves in the UK today.

Nigel Theobald, Chief Executive, Oxford Nutrascience Group Plc commented:

"Securing a licensing agreement for Chewitab with the UK's largest healthcare contract supplier so soon since the IPO of the Company demonstrates the strength of our business model and validates the efficacy of our technology.

"The interest being shown by a number of global healthcare companies in our chewable and soluble products is being fueled by healthcare organisations striving to find ways to extend their product life cycles. This is creating growing demand for more innovative delivery systems and superior product performance and Chewitab provides a solution to this challenge.

"DCC Health & Beauty Solutions have an outstanding track record of exploiting markets with high performing products and we look forward to exploring other products ideas with them."

Rachell Hipkiss, Development Director, DCC Health & Beauty Solutions, commented:

"DCC Health & Beauty Solutions specialises in the provision of outsourced product development, manufacturing, packing and other services to the health and beauty industry in Europe.

"Oxford Nutrascience, with its innovative ideas, fits perfectly with the objective of DCC Health & Beauty Solutions of bringing exciting new solutions to market. We are excited about the prospects for Chewitab and look forward to working with our customers to launch of our Chewitab based products."

For further information:
www.oxfordnutrascience.com

About Oxford Nutrascience Group Plc

• Oxford Nutrascience is a UK consumer healthcare company that develops chewy confectionery, chewable tablets and liquid suspensions to allow medicines and vitamin supplements to be taken in a more pleasant and convenient way.
• Oxford Nutrascience has developed technology for the use of soluble fibres in medicine delivery systems that disperse and solubilise medicines, improve taste and mouth feel, simplify processing and eliminate additives, incorporate prebiotic health benefits.
• Chews: Oxford Nutrascience currently produces Ellactiva®, a calcium chewy supplement sold in the UK and in the Middle East, and plans to launch new chews to complement this existing product.
• Chewable tablets and liquid suspensions: The target market for Oxford Nutrasciences' Chewitabs™ and liquid suspension delivery systems are over-the-counter ("OTC") pain relieving drugs, indigestion preparations and cough and cold medicines.