The cash deal is expected to be completed in January 2008.

ODT provides software and solutions for document capture, text recognition and document classification and achieved revenues of approximately £16.46m (€ 22.7 m) in 2007.

Rokus van Iperen, chief executive of Océ said that the document arm was "too far removed from our core business" and that the sale would allow Captaris to "fully develop its expertise in intelligent document recognition technologies".

Océ recently announced it is to embark on a "Document Services Valley" project, but said that despite the company name, the loss of the Document Technologies division would not affect the initiative.

A spokesperson told printweek.com: "This valley is to develop new services around documents, extending the scope of our document management mission. ODT only partially develops software that is related to document management. This is the key reason why our company decided to divest this subsidiary."

The company said the sale is will not to impact Océ's 2009 results onwards and is expected to have a positive impression on the company's first quarter 2008 financials.

The 180-staff group has sites in Germany, US, Belgium and Switzerland.