---

General Motors Selects GKN Sinter Metals as a Supplier of the Year

10 May 1999

General Motors Selects GKN Sinter Metals as a Supplier of the Year

           Romulus, Michigan, and Emporium, Pennsylvania Facilities
                   Recognized for Connecting Rod Production

    AUBURN HILLS, Mich., May 10 -- GKN Sinter Metals was
recognized as a General Motors Corporation 1998 Supplier of the
Year in ceremonies last week in Detroit, Michigan.
    In accepting the award, GKN Sinter Metals President & CEO Seifi Ghasemi
said, "It is a great honor for us to be recognized by General Motors as a
Supplier of the Year.  This is the second consecutive year we have received
this coveted award, and I would like to thank all of our employees for making
it possible for us to be selected as the 'best of the best.'"
    "Indeed, GM's Suppliers of the Year represent the 'best of the best,'"
said Harold R. Kutner, vice president and group executive, Worldwide
Purchasing and North American Production Control & Logistics.  "Of GM's 30,000
suppliers, GKN Sinter Metals is one of only 184 that has achieved Supplier of
the Year distinction for 1998, an honor accorded to those suppliers who have
achieved world-class levels of quality, service, technology, and price in
support of General Motors," he said.
    John Stiles, executive director, Worldwide Purchasing, Metallic, added
that GKN Sinter Metals "is a premier supplier" to GM's Metallic commodity
group of Worldwide Purchasing.  "This 1998 Supplier of the Year award
recognizes the efforts of the Romulus and Emporium plants for con rod
production," he said.
    GKN Sinter Metals' Mr. Ghasemi noted that his company's global strategy
centers around being totally customer focused.  "Within the perspective of our
company wide, customer-focused orientation, gaining this kind of recognition
means only that we are meeting the standards of excellence we have set for
ourselves."
    GKN Sinter Metals, with 30 locations spanning 10 countries and five
continents, has sales in excess of $600 million and is the world's largest
producer of powder metal parts.  The Company employs more than 5,500 people
and produces over 4,000 different parts for the automotive, lawn & garden,
power tool, and home appliance markets.  GKN Sinter Metals is a wholly owned
subsidiary of U.K.-based GKN plc, a global industrial company.