RICOH Company Ltd announced that they have reached an agreement to acquire ColorGATE Digital Output Solutions GmbH (hereafter ‘ColorGATE’), a leading software provider in the printing industry with a specific competence in colour management. This acquisition is designed to strengthen RICOH’s growing industrial printing business. The transfer of shares is scheduled to complete on November 30, 2018. Founded in 1997, ColorGATE based in Hannover, Germany, has been supporting the printing industry for over 20 years by providing software for the wide format and industrial printing sectors.
With its extensive customer base ColorGATE is the European leader in industrial printing software. It has unique colour management technology to support printing and decorating a wide variety of materials used for packaging, floor and wall coverings as well as textiles and signage. It is a leading provider of performance-optimised colour management and workflow software to standardise and automate growing digital print markets including décor and textiles. In February this year, Ricoh announced its growth strategy plan, “RICOH Ignite,” which sets out its intention to reinforce its value offering by expanding its printing technology portfolio. The investment in ColorGATE is the latest part of this plan.