London, United Kingdom & Montreal, Canada -- Following the recent launch of its new range of digital production printing solutions, global printing manufacturer, Ricoh, has announced its alliance with Objectif Lune, a solutions provider for variable data printing and workflow optimization. As a part of the partnership PlanetPress Suite and PrintShop Mail will be added to Ricoh Europe's production printing portfolio, giving customers easy access to promotional and transactional applications.

Ricoh having experienced first hand the benefits of PlanetPress Suite in its own operations recognized the value of offering PlanetPress Suite to its customers. The additional offerings into Ricoh's production printing solutions portfolio will be available through its European sales channels ensuring customers gain easy access to leading document production and management software.

Ricoh predicts that the production printing market will grow to €12.8 billion by 2013 . It is Ricoh's vision to expand its presence in this market and become a leading force by 2010. To help it achieve its goals, Ricoh is offering a range of digital production solutions that are easily integrated into, and robustly designed for, production intensive environments.  PlanetPress Suite and PrintShop Mail is the latest addition to be offered with Ricoh's new Pro series; Ricoh Pro C900 and C900s, colour digital production printing devices with print speeds up to 90ppm in full colour, even when printing on heavy stock; Ricoh Pro 906 / Pro 1106EX / Pro 1356EX, three multifunctional black-and-white production printing devices built to accelerate the production workflow at an optimal Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

"We are pleased to work with Ricoh to expand the array of solutions it is offering to its customers in Europe. Like us, Ricoh is also supporting businesses around the world to achieve more efficient document production and our solutions complement the hardware and software solutions it offers," says Colin Casey, Director of Business Development EMEA at Objectif Lune.

"As a result of our business alliance, customers can work within their existing relationships with the Ricoh Group to get the tools they need to design, print, archive and distribute in their production workflow." says Simon Tapley, Manager of Production Printing Solutions at Ricoh Europe.