Lier, Belgium, 28 September 2004 – Xeikon International has already achieved its target of 60 Xeikon 5000 press sales for this year. During the official launch of the Xeikon 5000 in February, Xeikon announced that it would sell at least 60 new presses before the end of the year. This target was achieved just 7 months later. The Xeikon 5000 is the first digital colour press which really succeeds in combining the best of two worlds: consistent and high image quality both for short print runs as well as for runs of several million copies plus unparalleled productivity. It can process volumes of up to 3 million A4 colour pages a month with ease. The Xeikon 5000 also scores particularly high in terms of user friendliness and efficiency: toner can be added during a print run, press alignment is automated and paper changes have become a child’s play thanks to the improved mechanism for changing and cutting substrates. The Xeikon 5000 has a fifth colour station as a standard and is capable of printing on an exceptionally wide range of grammages from 40 to 350 gsm, which makes it suitable for even the most diverse applications. The new digital front end, the X-800, offers an enhanced toolbox for rapid and optimum workflow automation and integration resulting from the implementation of open standards. The X-800 has been developed with high productivity in mind: the controller is able to easily process print jobs incorporating complex graphics with variable data from over 1 million records. ”drupa 2004 was unquestionably a bull’s-eye, not least for the Xeikon 5000. There we could actually show what the machine is capable of achieving, which convinced the customers”, said Guido Dumarey, CEO of Punch International. He is therefore a satisfied man: “Xeikon has come a very long way in the last two years. This result probably exceeds everyone’s expectations, not just those of the sceptics. We have every right to be proud of what we have achieved already with this organisation!” The Xeikon 5000 is enjoying international success. Xeikon 5000 presses are already running in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom. As many as 7 machines will be installed in the United States soon, with Spain and Portugal to follow. Production is being systematically increased in order to deliver orders on time.