Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The German company had agreed to fund Screen Technology's first high-speed tile assembly machine when it completes its factory acceptance testing, but a takeover at Wilden means that the funding commitment has disappeared causing the board to look elsewhere, which it expects to be finalised shortly.

The firm has said that its pipeline of existing and potential orders remains strong and expects to begin shipments of products, using production from existing tile manufacturing machines, during the second quarter of 2007 with modular production being supplemented by tiles from the high-speed machine shortly thereafter.

The announcement saw the company's share price drop 0.5p to 40.5p.