BRUSSELS, Belgium and TURNHOUT, Belgium, June 28, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Cartamundi, a global market leader in the production and sale of trading, collectible and games cards, and Thin Film Electronics ASA ("Thinfilm") of Oslo, Norway with R&D facilities in Linkoping, Sweden announced today that they have entered into a commercial License Agreement and a joint R&D Program.
Cartamundi will use Thinfilm's patented technology and will now enter into a joint R&D project with the objective to include memory capabilities for the development, manufacturing and sales of products in the markets of trading and collectible cards, retail and private label cards, casino cards, promotional cards and cards for games.
The commercial terms of the agreement are undisclosed.
Johan Carlsson, CEO of Thin Film Electronics stated that, "We are extremely excited about this commercial license deal. Cartamundi is the undisputed leader in the market of cards and games, producing over 10 billions of cards annually, making them the ideal partner specialised in high volume production of cards. More importantly though, Cartamundi has a large number of highly profiled brand name customers around the world, customers that we now will reach with our memory technology through Cartamundi's world wide organisation."
"As part of our strategy, we are constantly trying to add value to our products, through creativeness and technological innovation. The agreement with Thinfilm is supporting this strategy as Thinfilm's printable re-writable memory technology will enable us to add value by including a functionality that has been asked for by our customers. Through the license agreement with Thinfilm, we will now be able to integrate a memory in the production of our cards and by that enable our customers to create a new level of sophistication and complexity into their games. Our goal is to be in production, and to supply our customers with this new feature, already next year," commented Chris Van Doorslaer, CEO of the Cartamundi Group.
Printed Electronics
Printed Electronics is a new, emerging industry that takes advantage of printing technologies to manufacture electronics with a wider variety of form factors, including thin, flexible substrates. Through the use of proprietary printing techniques, these electronic circuits can be manufactured at high efficiency and very high volumes when compared to traditional electronics. This enables electronic functionality in a whole new family of products such as medical and consumer disposables, cards, labels, RFID tags, toys and games.
Thin Film Electronics
Thinfilm is the pioneer in the use of functional polymer materials for non-volatile memory applications. Dense functional memories have been demonstrated using both traditional processing for silicon-based chips and more recently printing. Thinfilm delivers printed memory today and, with partners like Cartamundi, will deliver integrated printed electronics tomorrow. Thin Film Electronics ASA (Ticker: THIN) is listed on the OTC list at the Oslo stock exchange, Norway.
Cartamundi (Latin for 'cards for the world')
Cartamundi is the global market leader in the production and sale of playing cards. The cards are manufactured by 6 production units worldwide (Belgium, Germany, the UK, the U.S., Brazil and Poland). Worldwide, the group has a total workforce of about 1020. In 2006, the company recorded a turnover of EUR136 million.
From its Turnhout headquarters, Cartamundi coordinates an international network of branches and local agents in more than 50 countries. Besides the head office in Belgium, the organisation has fully-owned subsidiaries in Europe, the U.S., Brazil and Asia. Cartamundi in Turnhout has a permanent workforce of 350 and employs an average of 50 temporary workers.