Customer shipments continue uninterrupted, expects to resume production within weeks

Buffalo, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - December 8, 2022) - GVB Biopharma, a 22nd Century Group company (NASDAQ: XXII), today provided updates on its operational recovery progress and customer shipments following a fire that occurred at its distillate and isolate manufacturing facility located in Grass Valley, Oregon, on November 20, 2022.

The Company has opened a new logistics hub at an existing company facility in nearby Tygh Valley, OR and production space nearby in an existing lab facility that is established, permitted and expected to be online within weeks. All customer shipments continue delivery as planned.

"Our team moved immediately upon learning of the fire to implement existing contingency plans to ensure our employees were safe, coordinate with first responders and maintain uninterrupted customer shipments. These plans will also enable our team to replace our Central Oregon distillate and isolate capabilities within a matter of weeks," said James A. Mish, chief executive officer of 22nd Century Group. "We have connected with all of our major customers to ensure orders are delivered on time and are maintaining our revenue expectations for the foreseeable future."

The fire damaged the refinement facility at the Grass Valley location, requiring all hemp refining operations on site to be curtailed. Additional equipment and inventory stored in adjacent buildings was not damaged and will be relocated to nearby facilities as part of the Company's business continuity plans. The Company has commenced the insurance claims process and expects that losses resulting from the fire will be covered by its property and business interruption policies.

Said Mish, "As an enterprise, we had extensive backup plans in place to ensure customers continue to receive product deliveries uninterrupted plus multiple options already identified to quickly resume production of our distillate and isolate products. We have incremental equipment readying to ship from our manufacturer plus undamaged equipment that was not presently installed at our Grass Valley site. We are diverting that finished equipment to a nearby facility and expect to install in a matter of weeks. While we are bringing that facility online, we are utilizing inventory and can source ingredients from other suppliers if necessary to meet all customer delivery needs. We are grateful that the industry has rallied with us to provide support, product and access as needed."

About GVB Biopharma
GVB Biopharma, a 22nd Century company, is a global-scale specialty ingredient supplier and contract development & manufacturing organization (CDMO) with manufacturing locations in Nevada and Oregon. GVB is the largest merchant provider of cannabinoid extracts and isolates in North America with a focus on cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabigerol (CBG) extracted and refined at an industrial scale into distillates and isolates. GVB Biopharma's facilities are NSF International audited and are cGMP Registered for dietary supplements manufacturing. GVB is widely regarded as a best-in-class operator with a leading position in the hemp-derived active ingredients market, with around 15% market share and growing. GVB is also a white-label contract manufacturer of tinctures, gel capsules, gummies, mints, tablets, topical, and vape offerings.

About 22nd Century Group, Inc.
22nd Century Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: XXII) is a leading agricultural biotechnology company focused on tobacco harm reduction, reduced nicotine tobacco and improving health and wellness through plant science. With dozens of patents allowing it to control nicotine biosynthesis in the tobacco plant, the Company has developed proprietary reduced nicotine content (RNC) tobacco plants and cigarettes, which have become the cornerstone of the FDA's Comprehensive Plan to address the widespread death and disease caused by smoking. The Company received the first and only FDA MRTP authorization of a combustible cigarette in December 2021. In tobacco, hemp/cannabis, and hop plants, 22nd Century uses modern plant breeding technologies, including genetic engineering, gene-editing, and molecular breeding to deliver solutions for the life science and consumer products industries by creating new, proprietary plants with optimized alkaloid and flavonoid profiles as well as improved yields and valuable agronomic traits.

Learn more at xxiicentury.com, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and on YouTube.

Learn more about VLN^® at tryvln.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements typically contain terms such as "anticipate," "believe," "consider," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "explore," "foresee," "goal," "guidance," "intend," "likely," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "preliminary," "probable," "project," "promising," "seek," "should," "will," "would," and similar expressions. Actual results might differ materially from those explicit or implicit in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 1, 2022, and in the Company's Quarterly Report filed on August 9, 2022. All information provided in this release is as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

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