Nuremberg – LEONI will henceforth tackle the market of the future, fiber optic cables, with focused energy. To this end, LEONI has acquired the outstanding shares in fiber optic cable specialist FO-Systems, which has been part of the group since 2002, and integrated its production of polymer optic fiber systems in this company. FO-Systems will be renamed LEONI Fiber Optics GmbH effective 1 November 2004. In this way, LEONI will pool the data cable business hitherto operated by LEONI Cable together with the related production of fiber optic cables as well as the systems business of FO-Systems, which is based mainly on fiber optic cables, under one roof.

The technical and physical requirements placed on fiber optic cables and systems are becoming increasingly complex as a result of the constantly growing demand for global communications with high data security. Only absolute specialists will be able in the future to successfully prevail in the growing market for fiber optic cables. This is why LEONI Fiber Optics GmbH will focus exclusively on fiber optic cables and expand this business in a targeted way.

In this context, LEONI will abandon production of copper data cables for the office environment. The relevant production plant has been sold to Stolberg-based Kerpen GmbH & Co. KG, which will continue to supply LEONI with copper data cables bearing the LEONI Q-Line® brand name as and when required. This move will not have any impact on jobs and employment at the Roth facility of LEONI Kabel GmbH.