Millipore Acquires Chromatography Media Company.

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BW HealthWire)--May 18, 1999--

Millipore Corporation (NYSE:MIL) announced today that it has acquired Bioprocessing Corporation Limited ("Bioprocessing"), a private UK-based company that develops, manufactures and sells chromatographic media for the purification of proteins. Revenues for Bioprocessing were approximately $3.9 million for 1998. The transaction is valued at $19.7 million based on an exchange of 660,000 shares of Millipore stock for one hundred percent of the stock of Bioprocessing Corporation Limited. Millipore will incur approximately $0.8 million in transaction costs.

The acquisition was made to strengthen Millipore's technical product offering to its biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers. Millipore expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings by the end of 1999. Seventy-four percent of Millipore's 1998 revenues were in its Biopharmaceutical & Research business segment.

Nicholas Lambo, the General Manager of Millipore's BioProcess division commented: "We are very excited to add the chromatographic media technology and expertise of Bioprocessing to Millipore. The technology fits well with our long term strategy in protein purification, and it complements our existing membrane and chromatographic products. With today's acquisition, Millipore becomes a much more attractive business partner to the world's biotech companies in new therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies."

Bioprocessing was founded by Dr. Frank Roberts with financial backing from the UK venture capital group, Alta-Berkeley Associates, to exploit the opportunities for scale-up process separation and purification in the biopharmaceutical industry. The later stage investors included British Technology Group, Transatlantic Capital and Innoven LLC. Dr. Roberts will remain in his technical leadership position at Bioprocessing.

Millipore is a multinational company that applies its purification technology to critical research and manufacturing needs in the Biopharmaceutical & Research and Microelectronics industries.

The matters discussed herein, as well as in future oral and written statements by management of the Company, that are forward-looking statements, are based on current management expectations that involve substantial risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties that could affect the Company's future operating results include, without limitation, foreign exchange rates; increased regulatory concerns on the part of the biopharmaceutical industry; further consolidation of drug manufacturers; competitive factors such as new membrane technology, and/or a new method of chip manufacture which relies less heavily on purified chemicals and gases; availability of component products on a timely basis; inventory risks due to shifts in market demand; change in product mix; conditions in the economy in general, including uncertainties in selected Asian economies, and in the microelectronics manufacturing market in particular; the difficulty in integrating acquired companies; failure to realize the savings contemplated by certain restructuring activities; potential environmental liabilities; the inability to utilize technology in current or planned products due to overriding rights by third parties, and the risk factors listed from time to time in the Company's filings with the SEC.