SAFC® Invests in Liquid Media and Reagents 'Centers of Excellence' in St. Louis, MO and Irvine, Scotland

St. Louis, MO – June 11, 2010 – SAFC®, a member of the Sigma-Aldrich® Group (NASDAQ: SIAL), announced an expansion of its network of global 'Centers of Excellence' designed specifically to support the seamless upstream and downstream production of liquid cell culture reagents, including media, feeds and purification buffers at its St. Louis, Missouri site and its Irvine, Scotland facility. Together with the recently announced dry powder media manufacturing expansion at its facility in Lenexa, Kansas, these investments are expected to optimize manufacturing and supply chain in order to better serve the biopharmaceutical industry.

The investments include the creation of an additional, dedicated Animal Component Free (ACF) area at the Irvine facility and totally segregated ACF and Animal Component Containing (ACC) facilities in St. Louis, providing a complete range of cGMP liquid manufacturing, with batch capacities ranging from 1 liter up to 10,000 liters across both sites. Construction at the Centers of Excellence is scheduled for completion in the last quarter, 2010, with product qualification running through first quarter, 2011.

Harmonization of these North American and European Centers of Excellence facilities around key market requirements for environmental control and segregation is expected to ensure global product consistency while providing its customers with a robust and secure liquid reagents supply chain.

"As the biopharma market continues to mature and place an increasing emphasis on efficiency, cost containment and increased regulatory compliance, SAFC will continue its strategy to invest in manufacturing capabilities and facilities that uniquely address these requirements," said SAFC President Gilles Cottier. "Our Irvine and St. Louis facilities will be harmonized in order to function as full range, back-up contingency sites that support each other, improving our risk profile for aseptic liquids manufacturing on a global basis. By minimizing product variability our aim is to reduce customer manufacturing costs while simultaneously enhancing their supply chain integrity."

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "optimize manufacturing and supply chain," "scheduled for completion," "expected to ensure global product consistency," "plans to invest" or similar expressions, or by expressed or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from products derived therefrom. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. There can be no guarantee that the SAFC liquid media manufacturing Centers of Excellence will continue to meet the demands of the marketplace. Nor can there be any guarantee that any of its products will achieve any particular levels of revenue in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding these products could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the Company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Company’s assets and liabilities as recorded in its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Sigma-Aldrich’s current Form 10-K on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About SAFC: SAFC is the custom manufacturing and services business unit within Sigma-Aldrich that focuses on high-purity inorganics for high technology applications, cell culture products and services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing, biochemical production and the manufacturing of complex, multi-step organic synthesis of APIs and key intermediates. SAFC has manufacturing facilities around the world dedicated to providing manufacturing services for companies requiring a reliable partner to produce their custom manufactured materials. SAFC has four focus areas – SAFC Pharma®, SAFC Supply Solutions®, SAFC Biosciences®, and SAFC Hitech® – and had annual sales of over $600 million in 2009. SAFC is one of the world's 10 largest fine chemical businesses. For more information about SAFC, visit www.safcglobal.com.

About Sigma-Aldrich: Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and kits are used in scientific research, including genomic and proteomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development and as key components in pharmaceutical, diagnostic and other high technology manufacturing. The company has customers in life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals, and in industry. Over one million scientists and technologists use its products. Sigma-Aldrich operates in 38 countries and has 7,600 employees providing excellent service worldwide. Sigma-Aldrich is committed to Accelerating Customer Success through Innovation and Leadership in Life Science, High Technology and Service. For more information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its award-winning Web site at www.sigma-aldrich.com.

Sigma-Aldrich and SAFC are registered trademarks of Sigma-Aldrich Biotechnology L.P. and Sigma-Aldrich Co.