Administrators have sold Elonex Plc to Newcastle based stationery and printer cartridge remanufacturing firm Afic.

Afic founder and managing director Yuval Ella bought Elonex Plc following negotiations with administrator Deloitte Touche over the last week. A newly-formed Afic group company acquired the services and warranty business of Elonex Plc along with around 50 staff.

Ella said he planned to offer Elonex customers a range of IT and stationery services. He was planning to use the Elonex name to front his own £15m business. Ella told The Reg he would take good care of existing customer warranties.

Neither Ella nor administrator Neville Kahn of Deloitte Touche would say how much Afic paid for the £38.9m turnover firm. But one rumour circulating was that Elonex Plc had gone for £3m.

Elonex Plc, one of Elonex's two UK registered firms, went into administration in June with debts of £20m. It owed £7.4m to a trust that numbered Elonex founders the Wetrin family among its beneficiaries.

It did not take on the UK firm's inventory of PCs and associated goods which Kahn is still looking to sell.

Elonex Plc's PC manufacturing arm, for which the firm is famed in the UK, still operates out of France under the ownership of Elonex (UK) Limited, which is still run by the Wetrin family.

Elonex Plc used to buy its own PC components and then paid Elonex France to assemble them. But Elonex France owed the UK firm £2.7m when it went under.®