A COMPANY which published the complete works of Shakespeare on interactive CD-Rom before going into administration with the loss of about 40 jobs has been bought up, writes Chris Koenig.

Andromeda Interactive, an Abingdon company founded in 1993 as a sister company of reference book and encyclopedia publisher Andromeda Oxford, has been bought by design company Touchpaper.

The firm will move from its offices in The Vineyard to Touchpaper's head office at Park Crescent, Abingdon. Andromeda Oxford will remain at the old address.

Andromeda went into administration last summer after investing more than £3m in publications and interactive medical tutorial packages, complete with clinical images, animation, text, voice-overs and computer generated artwork. Two private investors rescued the company in September.

Now Touchpaper, which also has studios in Cheltenham and London, is buying the interactive arm of the business for an undisclosed sum.

Last year it had a turnover of £1.5m.

Six employees will move to Touchpaper from Andromeda, bringing the total Touchpaper workforce to 23.

The company already produces multimedia packages for companies including Nissan and ECI Telecom.

Managing director of Touchpaper Clive Hetherington said: "Touchpaper benefits from the technical expertise and editorial resources of Andromeda Interactive, while Andromeda Interactive will be able to call on the creative and production skills of Touchpaper.

"Among exciting projects in the pipeline are three-dimensional maps produced in conjunction with Oxford Cartographers."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.