November 12, 2001 — AUBAGNE, France — STEDIM and Pall Corporation have entered a cooperative agreement that will accelerate the acceptance of disposable systems in the biopharmaceutical processing.

Increasingly, single-use systems are being adopted by the biopharmaceutical industry to eliminate risks of batch-to-batch cross-contamination, to reduce ever-increasing costs of cleaning, sterilizing and re-qualifying traditional processing equipment and to enhance speed to market.

The agreement encompasses the following fields of cooperation:

1) Pall grants STEDIM exclusive rights on its Aseptic Connection Technology, for use in biopharmaceutical processes worldwide;

2) STEDIM grants Pall exclusive rights to distribute filter/bag kits to the laboratory market worldwide;

3) STEDIM and Pall will jointly cooperate in the biopharmaceutical field to offer solutions supported by Pall validation services.

“The quite young market for disposable processing equipment in the biopharmaceutical industry has been growing up to 20 percent a year. Our relationship with Pall, a leading global filtration services supplier to this industry, will expand our ability to call on, sell to and service this large and growing market,” said Bernard Lemaitre, president and CEO of STEDIM. “We are proud of our association with Pall and trust it will bring many benefits to our customers.”

“We are pleased that STEDIM, the pioneering and leading company in providing disposable systems to the biopharmaceutical industry, has agreed to cooperate with Pall, for its aseptic connection technology and filtration and microbiological validation expertise. This will help biopharmaceutical manufacturers accelerate their adoption of the disposable technology by making it easier to select, validate and operate,” said Eric Krasnoff, Pall chairman and CEO.