Press Release

Back to List of Press Releases

Leading Brands, Inc. North American Bottling Division Announces: Major New Co-Packing Agreements with Three Major Beverage Companies

Anticipated Aggregate 4,000,000 Incremental Cases of Annual Production

VANCOUVER, CANADA - October 9, 2002 -

Leading Brands, Inc. LBIX (TSX:LBI), Canada's largest independent, fully integrated brand management company, announces that it has entered into three new co-packing agreements to provide major new volumes to its plants.

The Company has agreed with Ocean Spray International to extend the term of their bottling agreement and also add new package sizes to the portfolio bottled for them. As part of this new arrangement the Company will work with Ocean Spray in developing new products and ideas.

The Company has also signed an agreement with a large North American company in the fast growing ready to drink alcoholic beverage market, to bottle their Western United States volume. This arrangement will result in Leading Brands materially increasing production scope and capacity to accommodate the new business.

The Company has further agreed to bottle a variety of products for sale in Western Canada for a regional producer of juice and other beverage products.

North American Bottling President Tim Dagg said: "We are very proud to expand our relationship with Ocean Spray as well as establish new arrangements with these other two companies. We estimate that these new agreements will provide us with approximately 4,000,000 cases(1) of incremental volume for our plants. The plant modifications and line installations that accompany these deals will increase our overall plant capacity by more than 25% and allow us considerably more flexibility for new co-packing business and our new product launches. We anticipate that these contracts will be substantially accretive to earnings in 2003."

About Leading Brands, Inc.
Leading Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:LBIX) is North America’s only fully integrated premium beverage company. The Company’s unique Integrated Distribution System (IDS) ™ offers turnkey, one-stop shopping to food and beverage brand owners, including manufacturing, distribution, sales/marketing and licensing. In addition, Leading Brands produces their own line of beverages such as TrueBlue®, LiteBlue®, TREK® Natural Sports Drinks, NITRO® Energy Drinks, INFINITY® Health Water™, Country Harvest® Juices, and Caesar’s® Cocktails.

Forward Looking Statements
Certain information contained in this press release includes forward-looking statements. Words such as “believe”, “expect,” “will,” or comparable terms, are intended to identify forward-looking statements concerning the Company’s expectations, beliefs, intentions, plans, objectives, future events or performance and other developments. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based on information available to the Company on the date hereof. Such statements speak only as of the date hereof. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company’s estimations and projections are disclosed in the Company’s securities filings and include, but are not limited to, the following: general economic conditions, weather conditions, changing beverage consumption trends, pricing, availability of raw materials, economic uncertainties (including currency exchange rates), government regulation, managing and maintaining growth, the effect of adverse publicity, litigation, competition and other risk factors described from time to time in securities reports filed by Leading Brands, Inc.

Back to List of Press Releases