Deeside-based Comtek Network Systems UK (www.comtek.co.uk) — a computer hardware company — is to launch a new product line after receiving a £500,000 investment from the Development Bank of Wales.

Nine new jobs will be created, as the company begins to manufacture fibre-optic transmission products.

Established in a garden shed in 1989 by current chief executive Askar Sheibani, it has grown from a one-man computer repair business to a pan-European provider of repairs, spares and support to the telecoms, datacoms and network service industry.

The latest funding round follows a £6 million acquisition of the intellectual property and trademarks of Sorrento Networks Inc in 2015.

Mr Sheibani said: “Our area has enormous potential, with lots of high-growth high-tech organisations that are thriving. This investment will enable us to further develop our product offering, while also creating more highly skilled jobs in Deeside.

“We are proud to have brought the market-defining Sorrento brand under Welsh ownership, restoring to the UK a lineage traceable back to the invention of data transmission over optic fibre at STL Labs in Harlow, where Kao and Hocking published their definitive paper in 1962.”