Mortsel (Belgium) - January 5, 2004 -- Agfa-Gevaert announces today that it has reached an agreement with Barco to acquire the assets and all staff of dotrix NV, a Belgian based company which develops, manufactures and sells digital colour printing solutions for industrial applications. The price of the transaction is around 6 million Euros. "This acquisition fits in our growth strategy for Graphic Systems", said Albert Follens, member of Agfa's Board of Management and General Manager of Graphic Systems. "dotrix will allow us to take position in the markets of digital printing and to gain larger access to industrial printing niches such as decoration, packaging and security printing." dotrix employs approximately 75 staff and its turnover in 2003 is estimated at close to 5 million Euros." We are excited to be part of the world's largest pre-press company, said Rob Haak, CEO of dotrix. "End-users will benefit from new product offerings and extended services which will lead to increased customer satisfaction. With improved time-to-market and Agfa's recognized brand name we expect to rapidly expand our customer base." dotrix's printing solutions consist of a high-speed full-color industrial digital press (the.factory) based on state-of-the-art inkjet technology and UV inks, a raster image processor for driving the digital press and workflow software to support the different applications. "We fully recognise the value of dotrix's innovative developments in inkjet technology", added Jan Van Daele, head of Imaging Solutions, "We are planning to add the experience and skillset of the dotrix staff to our own internal expertise in imaging. Consistent print quality requires a balanced integration of print engine, printing ink and substrates. We believe that this acquisition will give us a maximum synergy to offer cost-effective digital printing solutions in rapidly growing applications, such as packaging, label printing, decoration, object printing and security." Founded in September 2001, dotrix NV is a spin-off from Barco NV, located in Ghent. As a start-up company, dotrix has quickly gained market leadership in pre-press solutions for security and decorative printing applications and offers industrial printing workflow systems in various market segments. In 2002, dotrix launched its state-of-the-art full colour digital inkjet press, selling under the brand name "the.factory" (read: the dot factory), which applies the advanced technology of the single-pass inkjet colour engine. The customers of dotrix acknowledge the advantage of this high-speed, high quality press for flexo short run labels, flexibles, cartons,... and the economic return they receive on this equipment.