Functional Technologies Corp. has entered an agreement with a global, industry leader in yeast production and technologies for the optimization and commercial grade-production of the company's Acryleast acrylamide-preventing yeasts. This agreement, which also contains certain commercial terms, enables the producer to begin the manufacture of the AP yeasts so that pilot scale volumes can, and currently are being produced and shipped to the company's food processing collaborators, which collectively represent some of the world's largest and most recognized multinational food companies.

Acryleast is Functional Technologies' platform solution that has been demonstrated to prevent or reduce the formation of acrylamide, a carcinogenic as well as reproductive and neurological toxic byproduct that is prevalent in many widely consumed food products.

Under this agreement, Functional Technologies has now shipped commercial strains of its Acryleast yeasts to the yeast producer for scale production. The yeast producer has also been granted a non-exclusive right of negotiation to obtain an exclusive license to commercialize the company's Acryleast technologies for specific food sectors, such as in the form of longer term license agreements and/or large scale production and supply of AP yeasts.

The agreement stipulates, that once right of negotiation is triggered, these negotiations are required to be completed within a limited time frame.

The scale of Acryleast production to be undertaken by this collaboration will enhance the ability of food producers to conduct their own pilot testing to confirm the effectiveness of the company's AP yeasts, at scale, in reducing acrylamide under commercial processing conditions. Successful confirmation of the performance of Acryleast yeasts in a variety of food applications, under industrial conditions, represents an important milestone to drive adoption of the AP yeasts by various industries.