Biome Technologies has announced that it will sell its 50% stake in Biotec to Sphere, for £5.2m in cash.

The UK-based bio-plastics company said the sale will allow it to focus on its strategy to develop high margin, application led products.

Biome Technologies Chairman John Standen said this sale was an important step for the company and it will allow its bioplastics division to work exclusively on developing and commercializing wholly owned intellectual property.

"The Board believes it is an appropriate time to divest its stake given the weak and uncertain market segments serviced by Biotec. In addition, we believe Biotec's dedicated operations will become increasingly less relevant to Biome's operations in the coming years as we focus on delivering our strategy to develop products with higher levels of functionality which are likely to require different production technologies," added Standen.