Rochester, N.Y., June 2, 2003 - As part of its ongoing commitment to open industry standards, Heidelberg's digital business announced today that it has joined an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited standards committee. Heidelberg’s Digital Print Solution Center is now a member of the Accredited Standards Committee X9, the only ANSI-accredited group that establishes and controls national standards to ensure security in the financial industry. Affiliates of X9 include bankers, printers, manufacturers, regulators, consultants, securities professionals and other industry leaders. Within X9, a Heidelberg representative will serve on a sub-committee -- focused on checks and check-related activities -- that is charged with identifying technical problems, finding the best solutions and translating them into nationally accepted standards. The next meeting of the subcommittee will take place from June 9 to 15 at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, Mass. "Participation in this ANSI committee underscores Heidelberg’s long-standing commitment to open standards," said Wolfgang Pfizenmaier, president of Heidelberg’s Digital Print Solution Center. "We look forward to working collaboratively with our committee colleagues to develop and implement standards that ensure greater security of printed documents for the financial industry." The company's Digital Print Solution Center currently offers financial printing environments the versatile Digimaster 9110m print system, which features magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) toner and special fonts for applications including printing checks, rebates, coupons, and other financial transactional documents -- at 110 images per minute with variable data input. The Digimaster 9110m machine is engineered to include the added security that MICR printing demands. This flexible system also offers non-MICR high quality printing by simply switching the toning station.