Premier Electronics Named “Engineer’s Favourite Distributor” for 2009 by EDN China
Award Demonstrates Market Recognition for Outstanding Technical Support, Innovative Services and Investment in Asia Pacific’s Electronic Design Engineering Community

Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Friday, November 20, 2009 -- (Business Wire India)

Premier Farnell the leading multi-channel, high service distributor supporting millions of engineers and purchasing professionals globally, today announced the recognition of its business in Greater China – Premier Electronics – as the “Engineer’s Favourite Distributor” for 2009. This prestigious award in China was sponsored by EDN, part of Reed Business Information. Premier Electronics was selected by engineers across the region, industry experts, readers of EDN China and visitors to the publication’s website.

The award demonstrates Premier Farnell’s continued commitment to developing innovative solutions for design engineers around the world. Recently, for example, the company launched element14, an online community that uses the latest Web 2.0 technology to create a unique, multi-lingual environment where design engineers can access the latest technology tools, software and solutions. Element14 also enables customers to consult industry experts from leading manufacturers to learn of the latest trends and developments via forums, articles and blogs whilst sharing information and collaborating with other electronic design engineers globally.

Among the many investments that underpin the company’s commitment to high service as recognized by the EDN readers are: Premier Electronics online technical support with a live chat facility; Tech-Cast, that provides customers on-demand product training from global suppliers; the DesignLink CAD interface; EAGLE CAD software from the group’s latest acquisition of CadSoft; and Tech First, a journal available in print and online in a variety of languages including Mandarin.

“We are delighted to be recognised by China’s growing engineering community for our outstanding technical support,” said Harriet Green, CEO of Premier Farnell plc. “We continue to listen carefully to our customers globally and develop our technical capabilities to meet their needs as we grow our services, product range and technical solutions for the future. Innovation remains at the forefront of everything we do and we’ll continue to invest heavily to meet the needs of the global design engineering community, so critical to the future of our technology industry. The growing influence of Asia Pacific in this arena is important and we continue to expand our business in the region. This award is significant to us and we thank EDN and its readers for this accolade.”

About Premier Farnell

Premier Farnell plc (LSE:pfl) is a leading high service, multi-channel distributor of electronic, and industrial products and specialist services throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. It goes to market with a differentiated value proposition, world-class marketing, a stocked range of 450,000+ products, and access to 4,000,000 more items from 3,500 top manufacturers. The company has group sales of £823.1m and over 4,100 employees globally.

While global in scope, Premier Farnell recognizes the individual needs of each market and has continued to internationalize its model accordingly, trading locally under different brand names. Its primary electronics businesses trade as Farnell in the UK, India, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Newark in the US, Canada and Mexico, and Premier Electronics in China and Hong Kong. In Singapore, Malaysia, and Brazil the operation is known as Farnell Newark.

For more information visit the website at www.PremierFarnell.com.