avt - discuss, page-3

Here's the latest announcement anyway.


AVT HOLDINGS LIMITED 2003-03-03 ASX-SIGNAL-G

HOMEX - Sydney

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The technical feasibility study being conducted by Australian blood
plasma company AVT Holdings Limited (AVT), for its China blood plasma
project, is currently running four months ahead of schedule.

AVT's technology partner, Upfront Chromatography A/S of Denmark, has
indicated it will complete Phases 1 and 2 of the Technical
Feasibility Study by mid-March 2003 instead of 30 June 2003.

Phase 3, the operation of a pilot plant at Chengdu in China, will
begin in late April, four months ahead of schedule.

Stuart Nettleton, general manager of AVT Plasma, said the early
success of the technical feasibility study removed much of the
technical risk from the blood fractionation project.

"We still need to see the pilot plant work to confirm industrial
scale-up but we have seen in existing Upfront projects that once the
ligand chemistry (a key component of the process) is finalised, the
scale-up of the fractionation technology is straightforward," Mr
Nettleton said.

AVT is implementing a new blood fractionation process incorporating
Expanded Bed Absorption (EBA) Chromatography, developed in Denmark to
extract food enzymes and already in use in Australia for the
extraction of milk whey proteins.

The EBA low pressure process inherently eliminates viral impurities
such as HIV and Hepatitis B, while increasing yield up to 100 per
cent in a single process.

Upfront has reached a conceptual bench-scale proof for onecolumn
albumin/IgG EBA capture and is not far from reaching AVT's design
goals in terms of yields and purity of the two fractions. Scientific
consultant to AVT for the blood plasma project, Dr Neil Goss, said
Upfront's success in separating albumin and immunoglobulin G in one
simple EBA step at high purity and yield was very positive for the
first stage of AVT's new manufacturing process.

Upfront will provide an interim report on one-column albumin/IgG EBA
capture process within 2 weeks. The report will integrate into the
chemical engineering design of the AVT Process, to be implemented at
the Chengdu Institute of Biological Products.

Mr Nettleton said Upfront Chromatography had determined the Expanded
Bed Absorption (EBA) ligand chemistry much faster than AVT had
estimated.

"We regard this as a very positive development," Mr Nettleton added.

The pilot study is now expected to be implemented between the end of
April and middle of May. UpFront has invited AVT's Chief Scientific
Officer, Dr Victor Lin, and a technical person from Chengdu to visit
UpFront's Copenhagen laboratories in early April for one-week of EBA
training.

AVT is close to completing a $1.2 million capital raising to fund the
remainder of the technical feasibility study.


Richard Hill
MANAGING DIRECTOR