Reinach, Switzerland, 26 September 2012 – Evolva Holding SA (SIX: EVE) today announced that Roquette Frères SA (Roquette) has confirmed that Evolva has achieved the first milestone in their collaboration that was announced in January 2012.

The ultimate objective of the collaboration is the development of novel and optimised biosynthetic production routes for an ingredient with important applications in food products. Several targets have been defined to measure the progress of the project, including yield and production hosts.

As the first major target in this project has been achieved, Roquette will make a milestone payment to Evolva. The milestone payment does not change Evolva’s cash flow guidance for 2012.

Neil Goldsmith, CEO of Evolva, said, “This is already the second milestone we have achieved for a food ingredient project within the last few months. It is clear that Evolva’s technology is delivering on its promise to provide innovative and sustainable production methods for nutritional ingredients. I am looking forward to our next successes in this space."

"We have been working with Evolva's team of scientists for nine months now and we are impressed with their progress to date. It confirms our belief that Evolva’s technology will provide new impulses in our search for innovative products and improved production processes. Ultimately these efforts are aimed at strengthening our leading position in providing high quality ingredients in a sustainable manner from renewable resources” said Thierry Marcel, Corporate Research & Development Director of Roquette.

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About Evolva

Evolva’s mission is to discover and provide innovative, sustainable ingredients for health, nutrition and wellness.Evolva uses biosynthetic and evolutionary technologies to create and optimise small molecule compounds and their production routes. We are active in consumer healthcare and nutrition as well as in pharma. In both areas we have partnered projects as well as proprietary programmes. For more information see */" width="0" height="0" border="0"/>www.evolva.com.

About Roquette

Roquette, a French family group with an international dimension, processes renewable raw materials: maize, wheat, potatoes, peas and micro-algae. Among the 5 global leaders in the starch manufacturing industry, it offers its customers a wide range of products and solutions in the fields of human nutrition, pharmacy-cosmetology, paper-board, chemistry-bioindustry and animal nutrition.

Present in over 100 countries, Roquette has a turnover of over 3 billion euros. The group employs more than 7 800 staff. Its development, focused on nutrition and health and plant-based chemistry, is based on a strategy giving preference to the long-term, innovation and the commitment to achieve.

Its mission: « Serve men and women by offering the best of nature »

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This press release contains specific forward-looking statements, e.g. statements including terms like believe, assume, expect or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may result in a substantial divergence between the actual results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and those explicitly or implicitly presumed in these statements. Against the background of these uncertainties readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The company assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements or to adapt them to future events or developments.