Materia Announces Recent Product Development Success in Its Lanxess Partnership

PASADENA, Calif.--Aug. 16, 2006--Materia announced today recent product development success in its partnership with Lanxess Deutschland GmbH (formerly Bayer Material Science AG) in the field of nitrile rubbers.

Two years ago, Materia licensed to Lanxess the use of certain Grubbs' Catalysts in the field of hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR). Lanxess' management had quickly grasped metathesis' value in the development of novel rubber products providing robust resistance to heat, oil, and other demanding environmental conditions.

Since the license's execution, Lanxess has rapidly developed and launched a line of HNBR rubbers called Therban(R) AT (http://www.therban.com). The new Therban(R) AT grades provide extremely low viscosity for easy processing, fast throughput, superior surface quality, low (or no) plasticizer requirements, reduced mold fouling, and high filler loads. The automotive, paper processing, and wire & cable industries have all utilized Therban(R) rubbers, and the AT line has recently been awarded the newly established DKG Award honoring outstanding innovations in the rubber industry.

"We congratulate the technical and business teams at Lanxess for their achievement and we are pleased that our platform technology has been successfully commercialized in this challenging application," stated Dr. Michael A. Giardello, Materia's CEO and CTO. "This success underscores the potential impact of Grubbs' Catalyst technology in what we believe to be the first example of catalyst-based performance enhancements for the rubber industry."

About Materia

Materia was founded in 1998 to commercialize olefin metathesis catalyst technology. This market-enabling, Nobel Prize winning, green chemical technology enables chemical compounds to be synthesized with greater efficiency, under less stringent reaction conditions, and with reduced byproducts and hazardous waste. As stated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences when awarding the 2005 Nobel Prize, "metathesis is an example of how important basic science has been applied for the benefit of man, society, and the environment."