Read Andy Tribute's comments regarding this announcement

Electronics For Imaging, Inc., a world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Radius Solutions, a leading provider of Print MIS solutions for the packaging industry. Radius Solutions is a leading ERP/MIS software provider focused exclusively on the packaging and printing industry.

While the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the cash transaction is expected to be slightly accretive to full year 2010 results. The transaction is subject to various closing conditions.

"We are very pleased to add Radius to our growing portfolio of industry-leading software solutions targeted to the print industry," said Marc Olin, Sr. VP/GM APPS of EFI. "EFI's goal is to offer our customers a complete product portfolio that assists them from job creation to production, while allowing them to be more efficient and effective, and ultimately, more profitable. Radius allows us to bring this concept to the packaging market, which is one of the largest segments of the print market and an area of strategic focus for EFI, joining our Pace and Monarch MIS systems which are targeted to the display graphics and commercial print markets."

Radius Solutions will become part of the Advanced Professional Print Software (APPS) division of EFI. EFI intends to integrate a number of its award winning products including Fiery, VUTEk, Jetrion, Digital StoreFront, PrintFlow and Auto-Count, with the Radius product line. The Radius acquisition further strengthens EFI's growing product portfolio of software tools, UV Inkjet digital presses and inks, and MIS solutions for the packaging market, which is one of the largest printing markets in the world.

Radius Solutions is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with direct operations in the United States and Europe. Radius brings many years of experience developing and deploying applications developed specifically to manage the unique needs of packaging and printing organizations. Radius has established itself as a leading provider of management information systems specifically designed to help flexible packaging, folding carton and label printers manage their operations.

"We are very excited to have Radius Solutions join the EFI family," said David Taylor, President and CEO of Radius Solutions. "Our ERP packaging software fits strategically within EFI's solutions portfolio. Our clients will gain a supplier with a global footprint and the additional resources of a tier one organization. I look forward to managing the Radius product line within their world class organization."

Commentary by Andy Tribute:

The planned acquisition of Radius Solutions is complementary to EFI’s other MIS software solutions for the printing industry. EFI has found an increasing intention by large packaging printers to acquire ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems for the management of their businesses, rather than mid and large scale MIS solutions like EFI’s Pace and Monarch. EFI had found that it had lost out to Radius in a number of bids to sell MIS in this area of the market. Radius’s software is specifically targeted at the packaging and labels printing market where customers are increasingly looked at MIS products build around corporate wide bill or materials processing operations and materials management, as are found in ERP systems such as SAP. Radius Software will be run as a largely separate division of EFI but will utilize a number of existing EFI MIS systems modules like Digital Storefront and PrintFlow. Radius will no longer sell its older systems for the commercial printing market. The Radius applications will be added to the EFI MIS applications suite of PrintSmith, Pace and Monarch and will be sold through the EFI global sales operations. At present Radius has just two sales people so this should give Radius a larger worldwide profile. Development of the Radius Solutions software will continue to be carried out in the UK. The Radius Solutions software will be shown alongside EFI’s other MIS product lines at the forthcoming Ipex exhibition.