MILAN - Italian rescue services resumed a search on Friday for a helicopter that vanished on Thursday with seven people aboard, including four Turkish businessmen, police said.

The helicopter took off from Lucca in Tuscany and was heading towards the northern city of Treviso when it disappeared from radar screens after hitting bad weather above a hilly, wooded area.

An initial search on Thursday found no trace of the helicopter.

Four of the passengers were employees of Turkish firm Eczacibasi Consumer Products who had been attending a paper technologies fair, the company said in a statement.

"We have been informed that search efforts by the Italian authorities are continuing... We hope to receive good news as soon as possible," the company said.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer and Ceyda Caglayan, Writing by Federico Maccioni; editing by John Stonestreet)