Novra Technologies has announced a distribution deal with a prestigious Japanese firm, marking another in a string of positive business development announcements the Winnipeg-based firm has made during the last couple of months.

Harris Liontas, president and CEO of Novra, which will hold its annual general meeting in Winnipeg on Friday, said there are a few more business development announcements in the works.

"We have been working on our sales queue for some time and it's now starting to pay dividends," Liontas said in an interview yesterday. "It takes a while for our product to be fully appreciated."

He said Novra has been in discussion with Tokyo-based Rikei Corp. for almost a year and there are some deals Rikei is working on that could pay early dividends for Novra.

"Rikei is a company that only selects best-in-class products," said Liontas.

Novra designs broadband products and applications and services centred around the transportation of data using digital video broadcasting standards. Its products have shown to be especially applicable in satellite communications. It has also developed a specialized custom television broadcast technology that has already been marketed successfully to retailers in Europe. Earlier this month, Novra announced it would be a provider of technology for Loral Skynet, a division of the billion-dollar New Jersey satellite company, Loral Space & Communications.

"These are huge global up-links that will be using Novra technology," Liontas said.

Rich Currie, executive vice-president of engineering and technical operations at Loral Skynet, said in setting up the kind of global footprint it has with its network of satellites, Loral will use whatever supplier is the best, regardless of its size.

"Novra's IP (Internet protocol) encapsulators allow us to offer a level of privacy and security to our customers that we couldn't do before," Currie said in a telephone interview.

In May, Novra announced it had successfully completed a trial with the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather information service and subsequently sold it more than 400 specialized receivers. Liontas said such an association will probably lead to other deals.

Earlier this month, the company released first-quarter financial results with revenue at $566,000, more than twice last year's total. Liontas said the company is forecasting top line growth of about 200 per cent this year. Crocus Investment Fund is a major investor in Novra, whose shares trade on the TSX Venture exchange. The shares closed yesterday unchanged at 15 cents.