Pact Ensures Sale in Hungary of Parker Products

Parker Automotive Corp. said Thursday said that it and TRW International have signed a distributorship agreement with a West German company that guarantees the sale of at least $2 million worth of Parker’s products in Hungary.

The pact names S&B; Enterprises of Reilengen, West Germany, as the exclusive distributor for Parker’s CarbonClean products in Hungary. The distributor will market and service the products for five years, with the option to renew the contract.

Parker’s product, a patented system, cleans harmful pollutants from auto fuel systems. The negotiations with Hungarian authorities started in November, continued in both Geneva and Budapest, and were concluded on March 23, officials said.

The Hungarian authorities will pay Parker, through S&B;, in hard currency, said Michael E. Parker, the company’s president and founder. He said that this is the company’s first foray into the East European market.

“I think this underscores the new (Hungarian) leadership’s attachment to the importance of environmental issues,” he said. “Through S&B;, we expect to be in a position to set up similar arrangements in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland by year-end.”

Laszlo Sipos, president of S&B;, said the Hungarian government has given the pact for the purchase of pollution control devices “priority status” for its scarce hard-currency allocation to buy imported goods.

“The bottom line was I’m not interested in trading my goods for potatoes and Skoda,” a car made in Czechoslovakia, Parker said. His comment refers to the recent pact between Pepsico Inc. and the Soviet Union to exchange American soft drinks for Russian vodka and ships.

Parker’s association with TRW International, a subsidiary of Cleveland-based TRW Corp., began earlier this year when it signed a master distribution agreement with TRW. That pact gives TRW exclusive rights to import, store and export a line of CarbonClean products to their distributors throughout Europe, including the Eastern bloc countries.

According to the terms of this agreement, TRW will sell $20 million worth of CarbonClean products to its 500-strong European distribution network.

TRW officials could not be reached for comment.

Costa Mesa-based Parker began operations in February, 1987, and became a public company in March last year with the sale of about 25% of the firm’s stock. Parker and his family still own a majority of the company’s stock.