Groupe Danone and Yakult are reinforcing their ties by appointing two additional Danone members to the Yakult Honsha Board of Directors, raising the total number to four. The two companies have also agreed to extend the period for which Danone has undertaken to maintain its current interest in Yakult Honsha at 20.02%, the same level as in 2004, for a further three years to 2012.

In the past three years, the two leaders in probiotics have established joint ventures in India and Vietnam, deployed exchange programs in research, formed the Global Probiotic Council, and a joint organization of scientific symposia.

Building on their history of research, Yakult Honsha has just granted Groupe Danone's Daniel Carasso Research Center a license for its YIF-Scan, a high-precision system that quantifies bacteria, targeting gene sequences (RNA and DNA) specific to particular intestinal bacteria.