Agfa will sharpen focus with cine factory sale

Agfa is negotiating to sell a Torrance, CA, facility that producesa digital imaging device used in cardiac catheterization labs.Enhanced Imaging Technologies (EIT), parent company of cardiaccath accessories supplier Vari-X, announced last month that ithas filed a letter of intent to purchase the division.

The sale would give Irvine, CA-based EIT a path to developits own digital imaging products while allowing Agfa the opportunityto shed a division outside the company's core business.

The Torrance operation manufactures Cinestore, which digitizesand displays cine images. Cinestore is used primarily for imagingduring cardiac cath procedures and does not have an image archivingcapability.

Vari-X distributes Cinestore, as well as a large volume ofAgfa film. That relationship was one of the factors that led toAgfa's decision to negotiate the sale of the operation to EIT.

"We were looking for a strategic ally like EIT that wouldbe able to grow the Torrance business in different directions,"said Dionn Tronn, Agfa vice president for corporate communications."The products are not part of Agfa's core business worldwide.We were diverting too much of our management time to it. The technologymay have other applications, but we wouldn't be able to pursuethat."

Vari-X will continue to supply Agfa with Cinestore, accordingto EIT, and the Torrance facility may continue to perform contractengineering projects for Agfa.

Cinestore offers EIT a springboard for developing more advanceddevices that complement digital products it already distributes,according to Bob Quinn, EIT's vice president of corporate affairs.

"There is some impressive technology in the Torrance group,"Quinn said. "We will look for any opportunity to exploitthat, particularly in cardiology. We'd love to come up with ourown proprietary machine that's state of the art and sell it throughthe Vari-X organization."

The Torrance facility produced about $12 million in annualrevenue for Agfa, according to Quinn. EIT's annual revenues are$45 million.