Harley fires up Blaze

BLAZE International, which is seeking to commercialise its recently acquired PIXe compres-sion technology, has bolstered its board with the appointment of Peter Harley as chairman. Mr Harley was a senior executive at ERG, is currently chairman of iiNet and the Australian Telecommunications Cooperative Research Centre, and is a director of Perilya and Gunson Resources. He replaces Peter Bartleet, who was with the company for six years. Also leaving the board is Peter Bevan, who invented the PIXe compression technology that is now Blaze’s main focus. Blaze acquired PIXe early this year and transferred its principal place of business from Perth to Melbourne to support its new focus. The company plans to raise $1.5 million through an under-written share purchase plan pitched at five cents per share. It will use the money to fund the final development of PIXe technology prior to launching the product in the US and Asia in early 2006. PIXe is a pre-compression filter for distribution of video over low bandwidth environments. The company believes PIXe could open up new markets, such as the 2.0G and 2.5G mobile phone markets, where video transmission is very limited due to bandwidth requirements and processing capacity of the phones. Blaze said it has commis-sioned a PIXe development centre in Delhi, India, where all future development will take place.