May 15, 2009
Unitron Wins Prestigious Premier’s Catalyst Award for Best Innovation

Company’s Breakthrough Technology Recognized with Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Award

Kitchener, Ontario, Canada – Unitron is honoured to announce that it has been named the Company with the Best Innovation by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation in the 2009 Premier’s Catalyst Awards.  The award was presented Tuesday night by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty at a gala ceremony at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto.

The Premier's Catalyst Awards help build a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Ontario by recognizing excellence and leadership in innovation. Five awards of $200,000 were presented to Ontario companies who were recognized for developing a commercially successful new, or significantly improved, product or service based on a breakthrough technology. Winning innovations had to have the potential to improve Ontario’s economy, society or sustainable development. The Company with the Best Innovation Award celebrates Unitron for its outstanding performance, growing revenues and the potential to increase market share as a result of developing a commercially successful product or service based on a breakthrough technology.

“This award program is a key part of Ontario’s strategy to attract and retain our best and brightest and build on our culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Premier Dalton McGuinty. "Ontario is a hotbed of opportunity, and Unitron has a demonstrated history of advancing the global hearing aid industry by collaborating with the exceptional talents from the technological, scientific and educational communities in the Region of Waterloo, where the company is headquartered.”

“The McGuinty government values the work that our top researchers and innovators do, and the wealth and jobs that they create in Ontario. The world is taking notice of their achievements, and we’re proud to help celebrate Unitron’s success,” said John Wilkinson, Minister of Research and Innovation.

Unitron was honoured for the Yuu™ Hearing System, which - following its release in 2007 - immediately established a new benchmark, with innovation demonstrated on many different levels:  digital signal processing; user control and mechanical design and ergonomics. These innovations delivered measurable benefits to hearing healthcare professionals and people with hearing loss in such areas as performance, aesthetics, ease of use and the fitting process.

Among its many innovations, Yuu was recognized as the first interactive, automatic hearing solution that empowers wearers to fine-tune their own adaptive features using the industry-first breakthrough feature, Comfort-Clarity Balance.  Wearers can then teach their hearing instruments to make the same adjustments automatically when they encounter the same listening situations.

Upon receiving the award, Cameron Hay, Unitron President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We have an extraordinary culture of innovation at our Company, and this culture is supported by tremendous resources across Ontario. I strongly believe that in our field of hearing healthcare, Ontario has the most concentrated cluster of innovators in the world. We are supported by world-class academic institutions with whom we collaborate on our research.  We work with world-class industrial design firms, DSP chip manufacturers and diagnostic equipment manufacturers – all based in Ontario and all with success on a global scale. This award will accelerate our efforts to remain a global leader in our field.”

About Unitron
Unitron is a global innovator of technologically advanced hearing instruments. We care deeply about people with hearing loss and work closely with hearing healthcare professionals to make advanced, purpose-driven solutions available to everyone. Headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; Unitron, a member of the Sonova Group, meets the needs of customers through 16 international offices and through distributors in a further 53 countries. For more information, please visit us on the web at unitron.com.

Contact:
Ann Marie Lang
Corporate Media Relations
(519) 895-0100 ext. 2104
annmarie.lang@unitron.com