LOD, Israel--Dec. 13, 2004-- NUR Macroprinters, a leading supplier of wide-format inkjet production printing systems for the out-of-home advertising market, today announced that it has completed a successful beta test phase for the new NUR Expedio(TM) 5000 wide-format UV inkjet production printer and it has begun worldwide commercial shipments. The NUR Expedio 5000 is a new 5-meter/16-foot superwide inkjet production printer that uses UV-curable inks. Previewed at several industry events earlier in 2004, the NUR Expedio is the first roll-fed wide-format inkjet production press equipped with UV-curable inks to reach the market. David Amir, president and CEO of NUR Macroprinters Ltd. commented, "The marketplace appears to recognize that this new UV inkjet press represents a real breakthrough in terms of speed, quality and versatility. We've already secured a substantial backlog of orders and have expanded our production capacity to meet the growing demand for the NUR Expedio." During beta testing at sites in both the U.S. and in Europe, NUR Expedio customers were producing sellable prints off the machine in as little as three days after installation. The machines have been running exceptionally reliably since then and they were being used for full-time production printing during the beta test phase. Beta testing also verified the full versatility of the machine, with customers printing jobs on a variety of media types including PVC, paper, mesh and other specialty media. The beta test sites also took full advantage of the productivity NUR Expedio 5000 offers by printing jobs of sellable quality at speeds up to 1600 square feet (150 square meters) per hour. Among the jobs produced during the beta test phase are many large-scale outdoor applications that leverage the machine's 5-meter/16 ft.-wide format. Gescom in Italy produced a large building wrap installed in Rome during its testing period, and Maserdotti, also in Italy, has been printing jobs on flex PVC and mesh at a volume of approximately 32,000 square feet (3,000 square meters) per week, mostly in 4-colors at speeds between 1,100 square feet (105 square meters) and 1,600 square feet per hour, including banners and a grand format indoor application job for Nike. Itay Shalit, director of marketing at NUR Macroprinters, said "We are very pleased that beta testing for the machine went so smoothly. Each of the beta test sites also operate our NUR Tempo(TM) flatbed inkjet press, so the users at these sites were already familiar with the capabilities of inkjet printing with UV-curable inks. They were previously exposed to the media versatility UV-curable inks offer and NUR Expedio now gives them the ability to utilize this versatility in wider formats and faster print speeds, placing these sites at the forefront of wide-format inkjet production printing technology." Raffaele Friggi, production manager of Gescom in Viterbo, Italy, one of the European beta test sites for the machine, said "NUR fulfilled its promise for speed and quality with NUR Expedio 5000. Thanks to the improved quality we're getting from the machine and the environmentally friendly UV-curable inks, the number of new projects we are winning is higher than ever before. Our customers are happy to get such good quality with no compromise on delivery time and we are able to provide them with wider format options. We've also been able to increase our profit margins, thanks to the higher quality and productivity. Today, we're printing between 12,000 and 14,000 square meters of output a month with NUR Expedio."