IQon in €10m French export deal


20 Jun 2006

IQon Technologies, the Irish-owned PC and software manufacturer, has won export orders worth €10m in France in a deal that it said could double the company size within two years.

The French market is one of Europe’s largest PC markets with annual shipments of more than eight million units.

A new subsidiary company, iQon France, has been set up with an office in Toulon to service the French and related markets. Earlier this year iQon hired 10 senior executives from the former Time Computer French subsidiary Granville. The new team has already won a number of significant deals with key French retailers, including the online store CDiscount and one of the country’s biggest supermarket chains.

Ciaran O’Donoghue, CEO of iQon Technologies, said that the France deal resulted from the company seeking to expand into mainland Europe, having established itself in eastern Europe through a deal with Tesco. “After several unsuccessful attempts to acquire the French subsidiary of Time Computers, we managed to pick up the entire senior management team after the closure of the Time Group in the UK. We now have on board a French management team which has a proven track record of success in one of Europe’s top IT markets,” said O’Donoghue.

IQon will produce a range of products for export to France from its European manufacturing facility in Dundalk. These include desktop PCs, laptops and high-spec gaming machines. IQon said it has initially invested more than €500k in the new French subsidiary. Aidan Donnelly, business development director of iQon, has been appointed as chief executive of the company’s French operation. “France alone has the potential to double the size of the company over the next two years,” he commented. IQon sales in its last financial year were €65m.

By Gordon Smith