Washington  - With a flourishing foreign business the US conglomerate 3M defied the recession at home in the second quarter, the Minnesota-based company reported Thursday.

The company's surplus rose by three per cent to 945 million dollars. Revenues climbed nearly ten per cent to 6.7 billion dollars.

The manufacturer of Post It notes and Scotch tape confirmed that it had so-far achieved its profit objective for the current year.

The enormous conglomerate offers tens of thousands of consumer and office products, electronics, autoparts and building materials. The company saw a profit increase for the quarter of around 10 per cent.

The company exceeded analysts estimations for the quarter. Its graphics business including adhesive films for traffic and license plates showed deep declines.

In some of the other five parts of the company increases ran in the double-digets. Latin American business did particularly well, up 32 per cent, Europe gained 18 per cent and Canada 14 per cent. Recently the company took over the security engineering company Aearo for 1.2 billion dollar. (dpa)