Joost Verbrugge takes over from Jan Van Daele, who joined the digital press manufacturer in April shortly after Xeikons Belgian assets were bought by Punch, and helped it through the transitional period.

Verbrugge was chief executive of Barconet until the end of 2001, when it was bought by Scientific Atlanta. Prior to that he was president of Barco Asia.

Xeikon International has also moved its headquarters from Mortsel to Lier in Belgium. The new site houses 28,000m of production and inventory space and the firms R&D department, production and sales and marketing.

Xeikon International said it had made "slight profits" in its first month of production as a Punch company.

Punch bought the Belgian assets of Xeikon three months ago, just one day after the company went into liquidation (PrintWeek, 15 March).

Its first major decision was to stop production of the CSP sheetfed digital press and focus on the DCP web-fed machine (PrintWeek, 12 April).

Story by Gordon Carson