HARTEST HOLDINGS PLC

('Hartest', or 'the Company', or 'the Group')

TRADING UPDATE

February 2009

Hartest Holdings PLC, the supplier of specialist instrumentation and medical equipment, today issues a trading update. In the Chairman's Statement presented in December 2008 with our Interim Report for the six months ended 30 September 2008, we indicated that the Group typically experiences a strong bias in trading towards the second half of the year. This expectation continues; strong sales are still anticipated in the final quarter, in keeping with the experience of previous years, although it is too soon to form any view of ultimate sales and operating margins. However, on current indications, it is likely that the deteriorating economic conditions and the weakness and significant volatility of the Pound Sterling against the US Dollar and Euro are likely to lead to operating profits before non-recurring costs being below current market expectations.

Concurrently, the subsidiary relocation programmes of Hartest Precision Instruments and Agar Scientific have commenced. In December 2008 we indicated that significant special and non-recurring costs in conjunction with the necessary relocations would offset the trading performance for the year.  As the relocation programmes progress, some of the planned expenditure has been deferred, and there have also been some changes to the likely basis of relocation cost recognition for accounting purposes, which is expected to lead to lower levels of non-recurring costs in the current year.

Overall, at this stage we do not anticipate any significant change to the annual pre-tax result that we were expecting at the time of our Interim Announcement.

-ENDS-

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