SmarTire Announces Restructuring and UK Closure

SmarTire Systems Inc. has given details of restructuring plans that involve the closure of its UK operations. Company president and CEO Dave Warkentin announced, “We have taken significant actions to reduce costs. Since September, our overall staff level has been reduced by approximately 50%. As part of this initiative, we plan to close our UK facility at the end of February, 2007. We do not anticipate that this closure will affect our European sales efforts.”

In addition to cutbacks in the UK, the company has reduced staffing levels in their engineering and product development team now that SmarTire has finished development of a tyre pressure monitoring system that meets the requirements of their major commercial vehicle customers.

The company has also announced that on January 23 it entered into an agreement providing for the sale of convertible debentures up to the value of US$1,800,000. That day SmarTire sold one convertible debenture for gross proceeds of US$684,000, and the agreement allows for SmarTire to sell convertible debentures for the balance of up to US$1,116,000 and any time during the subsequent six months.