Tecan announces OEM agreement with global diagnostics company

• Tecan to supply high-throughput instruments to provide
• blood banks with flexible pooling and archiving solution
• Supply of first instruments expected in 2010

Männedorf, Switzerland, June 10, 2010 –  The Tecan Group (SIX Swiss Exchange: TECN) today announced a global OEM agreement with the diagnostics business of Novartis for the supply of a new high-throughput instrument designed to provide blood banks with a flexible, single-platform pooling and archiving solution. Under the agreement, Tecan will supply instruments that will be used in multiple pooling, archive volume, and workflow configurations to meet the differing needs of blood banks testing individual or pooled donations.

The instruments, which Novartis will market as part of its leading Procleix® blood screening portfolio, will be based on Tecan’s flexible and reliable Freedom EVO® liquid handling platform, and will integrate Tecan’s Pressure Monitored Pipetting™, a sophisticated online tool for real-time quality control of the liquid transfer process that increases process security.

Tecan expects to supply the first instruments in 2010 with additional configurations to follow in 2011 and 2012. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

About Blood Safety
Blood banks take many precautions to safeguard blood supplies, including testing blood for HIV and hepatitis with extremely sensitive nucleic acid technologies able to detect very low levels of infection. Some blood banks test donations individually while others combine samples from multiple donors (called “pooling”) before testing. If an infection is detected, the individual units are re-tested and the infected unit is removed.

About Tecan

Tecan (www.tecan.com) is a leading global provider of laboratory instruments and solutions in biopharmaceuticals, forensics, and clinical diagnostics. The company specializes in the development, production and distribution of instruments and automated workflow solutions for laboratories in the life sciences sector. With its subsidiary REMP (www.remp.com), Tecan is the market leader in automated laboratory storage and logistics systems. Its clients include pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, university research departments, forensic and diagnostic laboratories. As an original equipment manufacturer, Tecan is also a leader in developing and manufacturing OEM instruments and components that are then distributed by partner companies. Founded in Switzerland in 1980, the company has manufacturing, research and development sites in both Europe and North America and maintains a sales and service network in 52 countries. In 2009, Tecan generated sales of CHF 392 million (USD 361.2 million; EUR 259.6 million). Registered shares of Tecan Group are traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange (TK: TECN/Reuters: TECZn.S/ ISIN CH0012100191).

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