Nokia-Maillefer Holding SA (PO Box 259, CH-1024 Ecublens), the world's leading supplier of cable manufacturing systems, has signed a letter of intent concerning the acquisition of Dolci Extrusion SpA (Via Marmolada 12, I-20095 Cusano Milanino) in order to strenghten its extrusion competence and product range by expanding its businesses to the plastics film manufacturing machinery market. Dolci is one of Italy's leading engineering companies, that builds manufacturing systems and components for the blown and cast film industry. Dolci's net sales for 1996 were CHF 37m and it employs 130 people.

Jaakko Asanti, the President of Nokia-Maillefer says: "Nokia-Maillefer's strategy is to strengthen its position as technology and market leader in plastics extrusion manufacturing systems. The acquisition is an important step in further widening our overall product range and strenthening our extrusion competence by expanding our business activities in related plastics processing machinery segments. In addition, the combination of Dolci and Nokia-Maillefer will further improve our ability to absorb cyclicality of the wire & cable machinery business and will result in important synergistic gains."