Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. announced today that an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate team won a 2003 Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Northeast Region Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for its Collaborative Enterprise Environment (CEE) technology, developed with Ball Aerospace. The FLC's annual awards recognize laboratory employees who have accomplished outstanding work in the process of transferring a technology developed by a federal laboratory to the commercial marketplace.

The team was selected for the prestigious award based on its transfer of CEE technology to the private sector.

Specifically, CEE technology facilitates enhanced decision support by enabling diverse, geographically separated government and industry teams to jointly develop advanced technology products and manage distributed enterprise resources.

CEE technology was transferred to the commercial market through the AFRL Dual Use Science and Technology program, which enables organizations to transition Department of Defense-developed technologies into the commercial marketplace. The resulting commercial product suite, KnowledgeKinetics™, evolved from combined commercial and government advanced research funded by Ball Aerospace, the AFRL, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

"Ball Aerospace team members are very pleased to receive the FLC's recognition," says Ball Aerospace's senior manager of Advanced Distributed Systems, Vance Saunders.

"KnowledgeKinetics facilitates information and technology sharing, as well as integration and evaluation across multiple domains of expertise," Saunders said. "The result is reduced time-to-market of new products."

KnowledgeKinetics has been installed at more than 65 government, academic, and commercial locations, as well as pilot programs within the Air Force Materiel Command as part of the Aeronautical Enterprise Knowledge Management program.

"By incorporating collaborative engineering and virtual prototyping, KnowledgeKinetics improves product investment payback by reducing development costs, simultaneously increasing functionality and performance," says Saunders. "KnowledgeKinetics is a standards-based, application independent platform that records and enforces business rules and processes. It can be tailored to customers' unique ways of doing business, and it integrates with existing business practices."

A panel of technology transfer experts from industry, state and local government, academia, and the federal laboratory system evaluated all nominations. The winning regional nomination will be submitted for the 2004 National FLC Awards for Excellence in Technology Transfer.

The FLC is a nationwide network of federal laboratories that provides a forum to promote and facilitate the transfer of federal laboratory research results and technologies to the mainstream, commercial marketplace. The FLC was organized in 1974, and formally chartered by the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986; FLC membership includes over 700 major federal laboratories, directorates, and centers, and their parent departments and agencies.

Ball Corporation is one of the world's leading suppliers of metal and plastic packaging to the beverage and food industries. The company also owns Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. With the addition of Ball Packaging Europe, acquired in December 2002, Ball expects to report 2003 sales of approximately $4.9 billion, with $4.4 from packaging and $500 million from aerospace.

Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this news release contains "forward-looking" statements. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those expressed or implied. As time passes, the relevance and accuracy of forward- looking statements contained in this release may change. The company currently does not intend to update any particular forward-looking statement except as it deems necessary at quarterly or annual release of earnings. Please refer to the Form 10-Q filed by Ball Corporation on August 12, 2003, for a summary of key risk factors that could affect actual results or outcomes. Factors that might affect the packaging segments of the company are: fluctuation in consumer and customer demand; competitive packaging material availability, pricing and substitution; the weather; fruit, vegetable and fishing yields; company and industry productive capacity and competitive activity; lack of productivity improvement or production cost reductions; regulatory action or laws, including the German mandatory deposit or other restrictive packaging laws and environmental and workplace safety regulations; availability and cost of raw materials, energy and transportation; the ability or inability to pass on to customers changes in these costs, particularly resin, steel and aluminum; pricing and ability or inability to sell scrap; international business risks (including foreign exchange rates and tax rates) particularly in the United States, Europe and in developing countries such as China and Brazil; and the effect of LIFO accounting on earnings. Factors that may affect the aerospace segment are: funding, authorization and availability of government contracts and the nature and continuation of those contracts; and technical uncertainty associated with aerospace segment contracts. Factors that could affect the company as a whole include those listed plus: successful and unsuccessful acquisitions, joint ventures or divestitures and the integration activities associated therewith including the integration and operation of the business of Schmalbach-Lubeca AG, now known as Ball Packaging Europe; the inability to purchase the company's common stock; insufficient or reduced cash flow; regulatory action or laws including those related to corporate governance and financial reporting, regulations and standards; actual and estimated business consolidation and investment costs and the net realizable value of assets associated with these activities; goodwill impairment; changes in generally accepted accounting principles or their interpretation; litigation; antitrust, intellectual property, consumer and other issues; strikes; boycotts; increases in various employee benefits and labor costs, specifically pension, medical and health care costs incurred in the countries in which Ball has operations; rates of return projected and earned on assets of the company's defined benefit retirement plans; interest rates and level of company debt, including floating rate debt; terrorist activities, war or catastrophic events that disrupt or impact production, supply or pricing of the company's goods and services, including raw materials and energy costs, or disrupt or impact the credit and financing of the company's businesses; and U.S. and foreign economic conditions.

SOURCE: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.