18:30 GMT 7 September 2001

Two of Europes largest digital pre-press suppliers, Barco Graphics and Purup-Eskofot are to merge.

The deal was announced on the second day of the Print 01 show in Chicago.

Purup-Eskofots president and chief executive William Schulin-Zeuthen will become chairman and chief executive officer of the merged entity, which has a project name of BPE. But Barco chief Bruno Pairon will depart to pursue other opportunities after assisting with the completion of the merger.

The two parties are now in a period of due diligence until 15 November and the implementation of the new organisation is due to take place in January 2002, when its new name will be announced. Its operating HQ will be in Gent, Belgium and hardware production and software development will be carried out in Europe (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Czechia) as well as the USA. The combined companies will have a turnover in excess of 155m (Euros 250m).

Barco Graphicss parent company Barco NV will hold a 49% stake in the new organisation and Purups parent Kirkbi will own 51%. As Barco Graphics was larger than the Danish company, Kirkbi was obliged to pay 5.6m (euro 9.1m)to up its stake to 51%, explained Schulin-Zeuthen.

Schulin-Zeuthen explained that the two companies product lines would be rationalized as quickly as possible. In commercial CTP the portfolio will focus on Barcos Mondrian and the PlateDriver, a new series of internal drum machines launched by Purup-Eskofot at Print 01. Barcos FastLane will become the standard commercial printing workflow product.

The range for packaging, newspapers and quickprinting will include: Cyrel Digital Imager; the DotMate, ImageMaker and MegaSetter Plus CTF devices; DotMate and DPX 2 polyester CTP devices; DMX CTP for newspapers; EskoScan;
ScanMate; SpinJet; PackEdge; QuickStep and ColorTone; Plato; ArtiosCAD; BackStage; EskoNet; Kongsberg and ColorBeam; Mercator; AtlasVIP and PrintStreamer.

By Lauretta Roberts, at Print 01 Chicago