Afic founder and managing director Yuval Ella aims to turn Elonex into a household name by sticking the company's badge on a range of other electrical gadgets.

Speaking after he closed the deal to buy the PC maker out of administration, the Israeli businessman said he was also considering launching Elonex Plc into PC manufacturing again, by opening a plant in China.

Ella said he was looking to buy electrical goods from OEM manufacturers and market them under the Elonex brand. His ideas are still green, but he envisages Elonex becoming a catch-all consumer brand, cashing in on its past success with PCs to sell items such as memory sticks and mobile devices.

He noted the upmarket mobile phone launched recently by Bang & Olufsen. "Something like Bang & Olufsen is how I see Elonex," he said. "A quality brand associated with computers."

Ella is negotiating with officials in Dongguan, a fast-growing city in the Guangdong Province of China about establishing a PC manufacturing plant. But he said whatever happened, he would continue selling Elonex PCs in the UK.

An existing deal with Elonex France, an Elonex division that did not go into administration, could still supply Elonex Plc with PCs, he said. ®