Tele Atlas to Establish Operations in South Africa
Written by Tele Atlas
Friday, 02 November 2007
Company continues expansion with planned acquisition in Africa of Georigin
‘s Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, October 31, 2007– Tele Atlas (FSE: TA6, EUNV: TA), a leading global provider of digital maps and dynamic content for navigation and location based solutions, announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a 76% controlling interest in Georigin (Pty) Ltd. With headquarters in Pretoria, South Africa, Georigin is specialized in data collection of West, East & Southern Africa, covering a total population of over 500 million people. Georigin also has a 49% interest in MapIT, a Pretoria, South Africa, based company that owns the rights to a map database of South Africa and Nigeria. The acquisition of Georigin is designed to significantly strengthen the Company’s operations in Africa and its direct interaction with customers and other partners in the region. The closing of the transaction is subject to the satisfaction of certain usual and customary closing conditions.
Jack Reinelt, Tele Atlas COO & Managing Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said this decision is yet another significant step forward for Tele Atlas: “Our commercial partners are increasingly looking for more data in this region, and we see this acquisition as the best platform to dramatically increase the content of our maps for the African continent, including high quality points of interest (POI’s), navigation attributes and addresses. Since the area is a fast growing tourism destination, digital maps of the region are increasingly important to Tele Atlas’ automotive, portable navigation, mobile and internet application partners. Leading countries like South Africa and Nigeria (together >180 million people) are truly emerging markets with economic growth of about 5% year over year. We see very strong growth of mapping and GPS-enabled navigation products in these very outdoor oriented societies.”
Reinelt continues: “We started our co-operation with Georigin and MapIT one year ago because they have the highest quality digital maps in the region. The well trained and professional staff of 80 people, both through permanent employees and contractors, at Georigin has very strong competencies in data collection and product creation technologies. The company also has a well established customer base in the private and government sector. Georigin’s experience in gathering digital data of much of the African continent will enable us to bring that information sooner to the market.”
Georigin co-Founder and Managing Director, Pieter Grobbelaar, who will continue to lead the activities of Georigin, said: “We are proud to be part of Tele Atlas. The integration of the valuable digital information at Georigin together with the global scope of Tele Atlas and its network of global partners, are the best guarantee for all parties involved, like customers and employees, that we will continue and even speed up the provision of high quality digital maps of the African continent.”
About Tele Atlas
Tele Atlas delivers the digital maps and dynamic content that power some of the world's most essential navigation and location-based services (LBS). The information is the foundation for a wide range of personal and in-car navigation systems and mobile and Internet map applications that help users find the people, places, products, and services they need, wherever they are. The company also works with business partners who trust its digital map data to deliver critical applications for emergency, business, fleet, and infrastructure services. Through a combination of its own products and partnerships, Tele Atlas offers digital map coverage of more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The company was founded in 1984 and today has approximately 2,400 full-time staff and contract cartographers at offices in 24 countries and uses a sophisticated network of professional drivers, mobile mapping vans, and more than 50,000 data resources to deliver highly accurate and up-to-date digital maps. Tele Atlas is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TA6) and on Euronext Amsterdam (TA). For more information, visit www.teleatlas.com.
About Georigin
Georigin is a management owned South African based professional mapping and geo-data company with a focus on building data for the African continent. Georigin's core business is data creation for GPS Navigation and Topographic Map Publishing applications.
The company offers digital map coverage of almost all of Africa. It has approximately 80 full-time staff and contract cartographers and uses the latest satellite and GPS capturing techniques in building its data.
Georigin currently supply data to a large contingent of International Defence and Telecommunication markets as well as major client in the GPS sector. For more information please visit www.georigin.com
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