DRESDEN, Germany, July 20, 2005 – Production is running at full capacity, the order book is well filled. The Dresden-based cutting machine manufacturer KAMA boosted its sales by 25 percent in the business year ending March 31, 2005. "These are the best sales figures since our company was re-founded eleven years ago," said Marcus Tralau, Managing Director of KAMA GmbH in Dresden. Two business areas - development and production of automatic die cutters and assembly manufacture - have contributed about equally to the excellent annual accounts. In the assembly manufacture business area, KAMA has specialized in Rilsan-coated cylinders. The increase in turnover can mainly be attributed to the outstanding sales of automatic die cutters (up 55 %). Major markets for the multi-functional KAMA cutters are the USA (23 %), Germany (34 %), Western Europe (20 %) and the Middle East (8 %). Novelties: Hot Foil Stamping and Hot Cutting Modules The largest individual order so far also came from the USA. One of KAMA's distribution partners, the American representation of the world's leading printing press manufacturer, Heidelberg, ordered five automatic die cutters in February. Four of them will be delivered with the KAMA hot foil stamping module. "Whether annual report or simple offer," said Tralau, "finishing printed materials with shiny hot foil is very popular in America." However, he believes that this trend will soon also catch on in Europe. This is why KAMA now also offers a hot foil stamping module for the TS 105 cutter, which processes sheets up to 74 x 105 cm. Another new development of the innovative firm is a hot cut module for the TS 74 model. This module allows plastic materials to be processed easily and accurately thanks to heated creasing and cutting blades. It is a true asset when it comes to making plastic film packaging, folded boxes, plastic folders or CD covers. If heated blades are used, the material will be displaced instead of being compacted along the creasing and cutting lines. This results in clean-cut edges even with thick materials and facilitates further processing steps thanks to low restoring forces. Short set-up times when changing between hot cutting, creasing, cutting, embossing, hot foil stamping or combined embossing and hot foil stamping ensure that KAMA cutters can be used very flexibly. Thanks to the novelty products and a promising volume of orders KAMA is confident to increase its turnover in a two-digit range again this year. In-house exhibitions jointly held with Heidelberg in Brazil (August), Spain (September), Italy (September) and Germany (September) will be the next steps on the road to success.