Greenchip Investments, the self-styled 'technology accelerator' which moved up from Ofex to Aim eight months ago, is to be reversed into by an American plastics business. William Davidson reports.

Malcolm Burne, Greenchip (GRE) chief executive, says that the company has been looking for an environmental company 'for some time'. And it reckons US-based Programmable Life fits the bill perfectly.

'We were approached by several businesses, but this was the one which met our criteria. Programmable Life is involved in the Holy Grail of the industry ? breaking down waste plastics.

'It has some extremely exciting state of the art technology under its belt and, via its licensees in Japan, has over 1000 customers. Some of these are very large companies, but unfortunately we cannot say who they are' ? Burne says he will be able to talk more freely once the due diligence phase has been completed and a circular sent to shareholders.

Programmable Life's introduction to Greenchip arose from its connection with the Arlington (ARL) group. Arlington holds big stakes in both Greenchip and Programmable Life and is injecting £200,000 into Greenchip to pay for the costs of the deal.

Burne adds that this was also to ensure that Greenchip had a minimum of £1 million at the time of completion. As he says, '£1 million is very nice in the current environment'.

Burne says that in light of the fact that this would constitute a reverse takeover, the shares would be suspended on Aim. This has not happened yet, and today the shares rose 0.75p to 6.5p.