diff --git a/product/PortalTransforms/transforms/xml_to_text.py b/product/PortalTransforms/transforms/xml_to_text.py
index 18358ca75e68c7c506b248ce29c3f1a86079d9ee..deb1f4e914e450bed8f11303d0c4578b96b21aaf 100644
--- a/product/PortalTransforms/transforms/xml_to_text.py
+++ b/product/PortalTransforms/transforms/xml_to_text.py
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ class xml_to_text:
 
     def convert(self, data, cache, **kw):
         text_list = etree.fromstring(data).itertext()
-        out = ' '.join([text for text in text_list if text])
+        out = ' '.join([text for text in text_list if text]).encode('utf-8')
         cache.setData(out)
         return cache