ICL Plc is looking to increase its share of the smartcard market with the $6m acquisition of US company Product Technologies Inc. ICL has already worked closely with the five year-old Middletown, Connecticut company on joint development of ICL’s SmartCity. ICL chief executive Keith Trodd said: With the global market for smart cards set to treble within the next two years to over 3bn pounds per annum, this acquisition of a profitable company catapults our existing smart card business to the very top. As the US is behind Europe in adopting smart cards, PTI has puny revenues of around $4.5m a year and is a logical acquisition for ICL which has been heavily involved in point of sale and smart card technology. ICL is part of a consortium which earlier this year won a $1.7bn to update London transport’s fare collection system based on smart card technology (CI No 3,475). PTI, which has 21 staff, will become part of ICL’s smart card unit.
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