CHICAGO, Oct 26, 2008 -- The Production Printing Business Group (PPBG) of Ricoh Americas Corporation and EFI, the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today launched the EFI Fiery(R) for the new 90 pages per minute RICOH(R) Pro C900 digital color printer designed for detailed production printing. The Fiery delivers top speed,unmatched quality, and powerful variable data printing (VDP) features to increase return on equipment investment for Ricoh customers in print for pay, reprographic and graphic arts production environments, as well as service bureaus and direct mail companies. The RICOH Pro C900 is on display in Ricoh's booth 1775 at Graph Expo (through Oct. 29, McCormick Place).

"EFI and Ricoh have a long standing, successful relationship, which is now taken to a new level with the exclusive Fiery-driven RICOH Pro C900," said Carl Joachim, vice president, marketing for PPBG, Ricoh Americas Corporation. "Digital printing is leading the way in the color production market because of its efficiency and short turnaround time. Together with EFI, we can address our production-class customers' needs and deliver the professional quality and heavy duty performance that leads to greater profitability."

"The RICOH Pro C900 provides businesses with complex production printing needs the best option in the marketplace," said John Henze, vice president of marketing, Fiery Division, EFI. "The Fiery ensures perfect color every time, fast document turnaround, even for the most complex VDP work, and powerful customization capabilities to help customers realize greater efficiency and competitiveness."

The Fiery enables RICOH Pro C900 customers to compete more effectively and achieve the highest levels of efficiency in production printing environments, where engine utilization, speed, advanced color management, and connectivity are critical to success and profitability.

The Fiery is fully compliant with PDF/X3, a specification for reliable prepress data interchange that enables designers to provide digital content files that can be printed predictably and correctly by the print provider. The Fiery passes the Altona Test Suite and Ghent Output Suite, making it an ideal proofing system for press simulation in the professional digital print environment.

The Fiery is an open, flexible solution addressing advanced requirements of RICOH Pro C900 customers, offering powerful standard features and the option of additional packages to customize their Fiery to address specific needs. Bundled features include EFI Impose, a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) document imposition solution; on-line, at-the-point-of-need instructions to make the most complex jobs easy to manage; advanced Fiery job management capabilities; and the Graphic Arts Package. Options include Compose, EFI's visual document make-ready solution; the Fiery Graphic Arts Package, Premium Edition, a professional "toolkit" for color accuracy and precision; and the award-winning EFI Color Profiler Suite profiling solution, a complete suite of integrated color management tools to ensure total color quality control in color printing workflows for graphic arts professionals. The bundled features alone or in combination with the optional features optimize digital press performance and operational ease, boosting productivity and ROI for RICOH Pro C900 customers.

The powerful Fiery-driven print servercanhandle sophisticatedVDP projects. The Fiery readily passed the most current PPML (Personalized Print Markup Language) testing and earned PODi (Print on Demand Initiative)'s newest interoperability certification. The certification ensures that Ricoh Pro C900 customers have the highest possible levels of throughput and productivity when printing personalized material on demand at high volume. EFI has forged partnerships with leading third-party personalization software providers and supports such VDP languages as PPML, Fiery FreeForm(TM), and a host of legacy proprietary languages, ensuring that the Fiery platform readily integrates into existing workflows and delivers consistency regardless of whether the job is VDP or non-VDP.

Fiery supports the PANTONE(R) Goe(TM) System, enabling accurate spot color reproduction and the ability to generate PANTONE libraries directly from the Fiery-driven Ricoh Pro C900. Optional Fiery connectivity with Rampage Workflow System enables high-volume prepress production across diverse plate setters, proofing systems and other output devices.

With the Fiery open platform and compliance with industry standards such JDF (Job Definition Format), PDF (Portable Document Format), and PPML, the Fiery seamlessly integrates into Ricoh customers' overall print shop operations, including offset/digital hybrid environments and third-party graphic arts workflows, including CTP (Computer-to-Plate) environments.

For more information please visit www.ricoh-usa.com and www.efi.com.