Electric Paper in Harcourt deal

COMPUTER training company Thirdforce has strengthened its position in the educational market by agreeing a deal with a major British book publisher.

The company said yesterday that its Electric Paper subsidiary would form a joint venture with Harcourt Education International, a division of publicly-quoted publishing giant Reed Elsevier, to provide combined book and CD-ROM packages to classrooms.

Harcourt is Britain’s leading educational publisher, whose brand names Heinemann, Ginn and Rigby are familiar to teachers. The new joint venture is believed to be the first of its kind and will allow the two companies to provide complementary material to be used in teaching computer literacy skills.

“This is an important partnership between two industry leaders. Harcourt’s brand strength, experience and distribution network is the perfect complement to Electric Paper’s track record of developing quality interactive educational materials,” said Thirdforce chief executive Brendan O’Sullivan.

Harcourt chief executive Chris Jones said the alliance would allow them to exploit the strategic fit between a leading educational publisher and a successful e-learning business. “We recognise that by working together, we’ll be able to make a unique offering to students, teachers and lecturers using the strengths of both organisations,” he said.