Ihr Platz Launches Wellness Beverages in Bottles Made from NatureWorks PLA

New Bottle Strengthens All-Natural Appeal

GERMANY, September 1, 2006  --  Health beverages under the VITAMORE brand have been launched this week in Ihr Platz stores across Germany. This new concept of flavored and fortified health drinks is produced in bottles made from nature-based NatureWorks® PLA and caps made of MaterBi resin. This is the first bottle in the world to have both a bottle and a cap made from biopolymers and the first bottle launch in Germany.

“With health and beauty being special core areas of Ihr Platz, we are glad to be the first outlet to offer healthy beverages in an especially environment-friendly packaging material to satisfy our environment-conscious customers,” says Michael Wilmes, managing director of Ihr Platz.

“The three unique flavors – “Beauty”, “Memory” and “Energy” – provide our consumers a trendy range of healthy and low calorie beverages with defined physiological profiles based on health trends we are seeing both here and globally,” said Bernd Merzenich, project manager of Ihr Platz. “Once we had the marketing concept for the VITAMORE beverages, we sought out an all natural package and found bottles made from NatureWorks PLA. We also worked with MaterBi to develop a cap so we could provide to the German marketplace the very first fully-compostable bottle.”

Since it is a bottle made from a 100% renewable resource, this bio-plastic bottle offers an increasingly attractive alternative to a bottle and cap made from fossil fuel resources.  Based on current Irh PLatz projections, by launching the bottle in NatureWorks PLA versus PET, fossil energy savings are equivalent to not burning 107,000 liters of gasoline or saving the electricity consumed by 2,100 European residents in a month.

The VITAMORE launch is being supported in Ihr Platz stores via point of sale promotion, public relations as well as at their website at www.vitamore.info. More information about NatureWorks PLA can be found at www.natureworksllc.com.

About Ihr Platz
The German drug store chain Ihr Platz was founded in 1895. With its home office located in Osnabrück, Ihr Platz is one of the top enterprises of the drugstore business in Germany. Ihr Platz offers a broad product range in presently 728 stores with a total sales area of. 240,000 square meters with a special focus on “health” and “beauty” products.

About NatureWorks LLC
NatureWorks LLC is a stand-alone company wholly owned by Cargill.  Dedicated to meeting the world’s needs today without compromising the earth’s ability to meet the needs of tomorrow, NatureWorks LLC is the first company to offer a family of commercially available polymers derived from 100 percent annually renewable resources with cost and performance that compete with petroleum-based packaging materials and fibers.  The company applies its unique technology to the processing of natural plant sugars to create a proprietary polylactide polymer, which is marketed under the NatureWorks® PLA and Ingeo® fibers brand names.  For more information about NatureWorks and its brands, please visit www.natureworksllc.com.

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NatureWorks and the EcoPLA design are registered trademarks of NatureWorks LLC.