On July 1, 2001, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Osteuropa Vertriebs GmbH (Heidelberg's Eastern Europe Market Center) took over the Eastern European and Austrian sales and service operations for Krause's 16, 24 and 32-page computer-to-plate (CtP) imagesetters. An agreement to this effect was signed in Vienna, the headquarter of Heidelberg's Eastern Europe Market Center, between Frank Bockermann, Sales Manager Eastern Europe at Krause-Biagosch and the Head of the Eastern Europe Market Center, Dr. Michael Outschar. The Krause Very-Large-Format (VLF) LaserStar imagesetters will be driven using existing Heidelberg systems, and can also be integrated into third-party workflow environments. The reasons for this cooperation agreement were explained by Dr. Michael Outschar, Head of Heidelberg's Eastern Europe Market Center: "Krause VLF imagesetters are already well established on the market and offer an excellent price/performance ratio. They offer high flexibility in the choice of laser type and thus the type of plates that can be imaged. With the Krause VLF imageset-ters, we're rounding off the top end of our computer-to-plate portfolio and we're now in a position to offer our customers solutions that cover everything from 2-page to 32-page formats." The strong growth of web offset presses among the Eastern European reform states called for a computer-to-plate solution in the VLF class. Customers on this market are looking for "one-stop solutions" with the guaranteed "Heidelberg service". "By cooperating with Heidelberg, Krause is significantly expanding its sales struc-tures in the Eastern European states. The easy integration of LaserStar imagesetters (as an autoloader or semi-automatic version) into existing workflow structures, along with their modular design, ensures a high level of reliability in produc-tion. The partnership with a major player such as Heidelberg means that customers in Eastern Europe can now be given first-class support in terms of advice, equipment and after-sales care", explains Frank Bockermann. With more than 20 branches and 800 staff, Heidelberg provides Eastern Europe with comprehensive service in 30 different countries. The area covered by the cooperation agreement spans eleven time zones and embraces a market of some 520 million people (Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Russia, the Baltic States, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Israel and Turkey).