FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation (hereinafter Fujifilm Holdings) has announced that it signed a definitive agreement with Australia's largest business service provider Salmat Limited (ASX: SLM; hereinafter Salmat) to acquire Salmat's Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) division. The acquisition, worth AU$375 million, covers all the shares of Salmat Document Management Solutions Pty. Limited (hereinafter SDMS), Salmat's wholly-owned subsidiary, SDMS's 11 subsidiaries as well as Salmat Asia Limited (hereinafter SAL), SDMS's Asian business unit.

BPO refers to the outsourcing of specific operations of corporate activities, including planning, designing and administration, to a dedicated contractor. The low-cost and high-quality aspect of the service has prompted an increasing number of corporations using BPO, which streamlines and enhances the quality of their work processes. It is predicted that the BPO market will grow by an average of 5 to 7 percent per annum worldwide.

SDMS, its subsidiaries and SAL, subject to full acquisition by Fujifilm Holdings, handle the BPO business, one of Salmat's main business operations. Their consolidated sales and underlying EBITA were AU$316 million and AU$49.5 million respectively for June 2012 term. The BPO business includes printing/delivering important postal matters including electricity/gas/water/communications invoices and bank account statements to end users, digitalizing and automatic processing of corporate clients' invoicing work to reduce costs, delivering information by email, as well as compiling a database of scanned paper documents and their management/storage. Leveraging their advanced IT data management capacity, they have been successful in streamlining operations and achieving higher efficiency and reducing costs by automating work processes while linking digital printing devices and work flow systems.

Positioning the document solutions business as one of its key growth areas, Fujifilm Holdings is strongly promoting the business shift from the hardware-centric business offering multifunction devices and printers to the solutions and services business. The acquisition of SDMS provides the company with the biggest capability to offer BPO services in Australia. Integrating SDMS's know-how in BPO with Fujifilm Group's powerful marketing capacity — sales performance, brand strength and customer base —, the company will expand its solutions and services in China and other Asian markets. Further, by introducing its print devices including the next-generation inkjet printer Jet Press series in work processes, it aims for business growth and expansion beyond what the current business trend affords. Working with Salmat to form a partnership, and also together with SDMS's knowledge and experiences in handling massive customer data and building a consistent workflow from printing to post-print processing, Fujifilm Group will accelerate the expansion of solutions and services business leveraging its document outsourcing business.