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25th June 2002

TRADING UPDATE

BBA Group PLC today issues a pre-close trading update ahead of its half-year ending 30th June 2002. The Group's half-year results will be announced on 3rd September 2002.

Commenting on first half trading, Roy McGlone, Chief Executive said:

"I am pleased to report that after a difficult year in 2001, due to poor global economic conditions and the effects of September 11th, trading in the first half of 2002 is expected to be in line with our expectations as the result of actions taken last year to reduce costs and strengthen our portfolio continue to come through. Margins and free cash flow remain strong and debt levels are reducing. We remain well positioned to capitalise on opportunities to strengthen our businesses further as they arise."

Aviation Services

In Business Aviation, year-to-date fuelling volumes (excluding the effect of the continued closure of Washington National to General Aviation) have recovered from the post September 11th decline. Volumes are now slightly ahead of last year largely due to continued growth of the fractional market. We still anticipate that Washington National will be re-opened on a restricted basis to Business Aviation during the second half of 2002 with traffic volumes gradually increasing through the period.

As we entered 2002, Commercial Aviation Services volumes were some 15% lower than the period prior to September 11th. The situation is gradually improving with the latest volume shortfall compared to the period prior to September 11th reduced to 12%. The integration of ASIG is complete and our cost reduction targets have been achieved. We are already producing operating margins in the Commercial Aviation business in line with our target for the year of 8% and expect this to continue during the second half.

Engine repair and overhaul has been somewhat affected by weaker demand for Turbo Prop engine maintenance, particularly in the USA. We anticipate that demand will improve during the second half of the year. We are currently examining a number of bolt-on acquisitions to further strengthen each of our core Aviation Services businesses. We anticipate that operating margins for the Aviation Services division will return to approximately 10% for the first half of the year compared to 8.3% in the second half of 2001.

Materials Technology

We expect in the first half of this year to return to positive underlying sales growth for the division as a whole after a decline of 2% in 2001. In the Industrial non-wovens sector we have experienced some improvement in underlying demand compared to the first half of last year whilst demand in Hygiene is relatively stable. The new air-laid plant in China is ramping up production and this will accelerate during the second half. Movements in raw material costs have so far had little effect on margins in 2002.

Our productivity programme, Excel, remains on track to deliver savings in line with our expectations.

Operating margins for the first half-year for the Materials Technology division are expected to show some improvement over the prior period.

Outlook

Barring any major change in the external environment we believe that the Group is well positioned to make further progress during the second half of 2002.