MONTREAL, June 27, 2002 – ArtQuest International Alliances Inc. announces the closure of a financing round with 2 private investors: the Solidarity Fund QFL and Groupe Conseil Harland Inc. as well as a lender, Investissement Québec. During this financing round, ArtQuest has reached an agreement with the Nanterre Court of Commerce (France), erasing its debt to the French company ArtQuest S.A. When completed, the total of private investments, loans and conversions, will sum up to a total of $1.5M for ArtQuest. These funds will be used to pursue ArtQuest’s development and marketing efforts.
Success of Crescendo 2.1 at IPEX 2002
Version 2 of the Crescendo production workflow, launched in early 2002, is gaining in popularity. Since the IPEX show in Birmingham (U.K.) last April, several sites in France, United Kingdom and Canada have already shifted their production flow to Windows 2000 and Crescendo 2.1, achieving instant gains in performance and stability. ArtQuest has recently signed distribution deals with French companies Maximicro Distribution, Kaleidos and Cassiopée as well as Northern Ireland’s EOS System Ltd. ArtQuest is also recruiting new distributors in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in order to expand its market reach.
New Harlequin Plugin
ArtQuest has recently introduced the Beta version of a new P1 plugin for the Harlequin rip, which offers up to 30% better processing times, improved CT/LW frontiers in Tiff/IT P1 files, along with new anti-aliasing options.
About ArtQuest
ArtQuest conceives, develops and markets innovative software solutions for the graphic arts and the pre-press and printing industry. Its technological platform allows all participants in the graphic production chain to achieve the transition from analog to digital modes, thanks to its Crescendo workflow and the PDF-IT secure file exchange format. The Crescendo system is also distributed by Agfa France as Process-IT and Solo-IT.