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Materia Announces Metathesis' Application by Dow Corning and Elevance in the Personal Care Market

Materia announced today a new Dow Corning and Elevance joint development and marketing agreement to apply metathesis technology in the personal care market. Elevance, an independent company created by Materia and Cargill and financed by TPG, applies Materia's Nobel Prize-winning metathesis technology to natural oils to aggressively grow in the $500 billion specialty chemicals market.

In the newly formalized relationship, Elevance and Dow Corning will utilize Materia's metathesis technology to produce a unique line of naturally derived petrolatum alternatives for use in skin care, color cosmetic, hair care, and underarm products. Elevance and Dow Corning believe that this line will capture a major part of the $2-3 billion natural and organic personal care market.

"Elevance's production scale-up was a major commercial milestone for our metathesis technology," stated Michael Giardello, Materia's CEO. "This joint development and marketing agreement represents a second major milestone -- market validation. We are pleased to continue our support of Elevance in this new growth opportunity through technology, product, and process development."

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. Metathesis has been accepted as an emerging "green technology" platform and has been broadly adopted by the pharmaceutical, chemical, and polymer industries. 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." For more information, visit: www.materia-inc.com.