Today, Ricoh Company, Ltd. and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG announced a global strategic cooperation. As a first step, both companies have agreed to enter into a global distribution contract for Ricoh's Production Printing Product portfolio. This agreement enables Heidelberg to sell Ricoh's latest color digital press, the 90-ppm Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition with Ricoh PxP Chemical toner, as well as appropriate future production printing offerings in Ricoh's pipeline. The global strategic cooperation, which includes Ricoh services and support, will start in April 2011. The first markets will be UK and Germany with a phased rollout to follow in other areas with completion targeted for drupa 2012.

The Ricoh and Heidelberg partnership is intended to support printers growing their core offset business while offering more flexibility toward their clients using Ricoh's latest digital print technology. Today, offset printers have access to a nearly unlimited range of printing substrates, spot colors and state-of-the-art coating applications as well as speciality inks through Heidelberg. By adding Ricoh's leading digital production printing technology, professional printers will be able to offer variable-data printing, instant delivery of urgent print jobs and cost-effective production of shorter run lengths.

Both companies are committed to deliver a value-added offering which drives long term profitability for their customers. Heidelberg and Ricoh's future plans are to include integration with Heidelberg's workflow solution, Prinect, as well as joint development activities for future printing applications.

Shiro Kondo, president and CEO, Ricoh Co., Ltd. says, "In today's climate it is important that commercial printers have the right tools to be versatile, and meet both long and short-run requests. Heidelberg is the gold standard in commercial and packaging printing. This partnership demonstrates its confidence in our digital technology and the ability of Ricoh to meet the needs of the graphic arts industry. Together, we are in a strong position to support businesses seeking to extend their existing equipment and services with a digital solution."

"In Ricoh, the rising star in production printing, we have found an ideal strategic partner who shares our values of customer focus, environmental sustainability, innovation, quality, and customer service. By rounding off our offset portfolio including Anicolor technology with new digital printing equipment, we are providing our clients the combination of best-in-class offset, and now also digital printing technology," says Bernhard Schreier, CEO of Heidelberg. "With this new partnership we will also address customer demands in the broad spectrum of hybrid print applications, i.e. the combination of offset and digital printing within a single print product."

As a world premiere, Heidelberg will display the new strategic partnership with Ricoh at the digi:media tradeshow April 7-9, 2011, in Dusseldorf, Germany. The visitors will explore a seamless live production portfolio, starting with job offering and ordering using the internet, Prinect workflow integration combining Heidelberg Anicolor Offset and Ricoh Pro C901 digital printing technologies, with Stahlfolder and Eurobind demonstrations for book and mailing production.