Speaking as the firm announced its Q2 results, chief executive Guy Gecht said that the first product in a line of “Nozomi derivatives” should also be available at the end of the year.

“We are pleased we met our target to ship five [Nozomi] units in Q2 and are on track to ship seven units in the third quarter, increasing to eight in Q4,” he said. “We now believe we will see an additional $5m in revenue from Nozomi in Q4. With normal conversion rates we will sell all the Nozomis we can make in the next couple of years.”

Nozomi is now set to bring in $65m (£55.4m) of revenues for EFI this year. The first unit in the UK, at display specialist Delta Group in Waltham Cross, has just been installed.

A Nozomi-derived single pass printer for textiles, codenamed ‘Bolt’ is in the pipeline for the end of the year. And Gecht said the firm was “already assigning development resources” in order to target another area of the packaging market with the technology.

In Q2 EFI’s overall sales were up 6% year-on-year to $261m. Within that EFI’s Industrial Inkjet division was the star performer, with sales jumping 10% to $156m. Productivity Software sales were up 7% to $42m, while Fiery sales slipped by 5% to $63m.

Gecht said that, had it not been for negative foreign exchange rates, the business would have hit the higher end of its performance estimates.

Operating profit fell by 8% to $29.8m and was impacted by the fall in Fiery revenues and R&D expenses for EFI’s new textile and packaging products.

Chief financial officer Marc Olin commented: “As Nozomi continues to scale and Fiery recovers, we expect that our operating margins will continue to recover from the low point of Q1 this year.”

At the same time as the results, Gecht announced that he intended to step down from his role as CEO after more than 18 years in the top job. An executive search is underway for his replacement.