Grace Opens Office in Southern Australia

W. R. Grace & Co. (NYSE:GRA) is celebrating the official opening of its new facility in Rowville, Australia today. The company is marking the achievement with an open house attended by customers, suppliers and employees.

The site operates as part of Grace Davison Discovery Sciences, bringing together the customer service and warehousing functions previously located in Baulkham Hills, New South Wales, and the sales and marketing teams previously located in Doncaster East, Victoria. Also located in Rowville are new instrument training and service laboratories.

The site supplies customers in Australia, New Zealand and the surrounding Pacific Islands with chromatography products manufactured in Australia, Germany and the United States. Chromatography is a technique used to separate mixtures of molecules into their individual constituents, frequently used in drug discovery and development applications. Grace manufactures and markets chromatography columns and instrumentation, as well as silica gel, a material used in many chromatographic processes.

“The Rowville site provides us the ideal footprint for future growth,” remarked Joanne Green, Vice President of Grace Davison and General Manager of Grace Davison Discovery Sciences, during the opening ceremony. “The location is closely situated to our customers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and environmental industries. Consolidating internal functions also allows us the opportunity to upgrade our sales, technical service and training processes. This move overall enhances our support to our customers in this region.”

Glen O’Sullivan, General Manager, Australia and New Zealand for Grace Davison Discovery Sciences, explained: “In addition to faster delivery times, bringing everyone under one roof has yielded improved communication, training and productivity.”

Located in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the facility is close to key existing customers, as well as potential customers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, higher education and environmental industries.

The facility's address is Grace Davison Discovery Sciences, 2 Kerr Court, Rowville, Victoria, 3178 Australia. The telephone number is +61.3.9237.6100.

Grace Davison Discovery Sciences is an established leader in silica media and light scattering technologies and markets an array of products for the life science, pharmaceutical, anesthesiology, forensic, and biotechnology industries, including liquid and gas chromatography columns, detectors, instruments and accessories.

Grace is a leading global supplier of catalysts and other products to petroleum refiners; catalysts for the manufacture of plastics; silica-based engineered and specialty materials for a wide range of industrial applications; sealants and coatings for food and beverage packaging, and specialty chemicals, additives and building materials for commercial and residential construction. Founded in 1854, Grace has operations in over 40 countries. For more information, visit Grace's web site at www.grace.com.