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Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc (President and CEO: Yoshikatsu Ota) entered into a basic partnership agreement with Oce, a company headquartered in Venlo, The Netherlands (President and CEO: Rokus van Iperen) on January 14, 2008 to cooperate in development and marketing for office and production printing systems.

Background and aim of the partnership

With the recent advances in digital technologies, multi-function, networking and full-color capabilities are rapidly evolving in the office equipment market, especially in developed countries. With the use of office equipment becoming increasingly diversified, the ability to provide ideal solutions is becoming even more important as a differentiation factor. At the same time, the introduction of higher-performance light production printing systems has accelerated the expansion of the digital (direct imaging) printing market.

Both Konica Minolta and Oce have a unique business presence in these two growing markets. Konica Minolta boasts proprietary image processing technologies for digital color equipment, highly reliable multi-function peripherals (MFPs), and advanced fine chemical technologies developed through years of producing photographic materials that enables it to produce high quality materials. With these strengths, Konica Minolta has maintained the leading position in the office use MFPs market and color light production printing systems. Oce, on the other hand, leads the industry with its comprehensive and innovative engine, software, and chemical technologies for high-speed printing systems, and with its well-established direct sales and service networks in both the office and the production printing markets.

In light of this, Konica Minolta and Oce have agreed to cooperate in research and development and commercialization of products, while enhancing their marketing ability by taking advantage of each other’s strengths.

Overview of the business partnership agreement

(1) Research & Development

• Both companies will examine and compare each other’s existing cut-sheet product lines to determine the optimal product mix and complement each other’s products in order to provide a highly competitive product lineup.
• The companies will jointly develop certain output equipment for the light and mid-range production equipment market which is expected to grow rapidly.
• The aforementioned two measures will enable both companies to speedily and efficiently develop equipment and software products that better serve diversifying customer needs in the information equipment market and to secure the position of the market leader.

(2) Sales strategy

• Office printing systems: Konica Minolta will supply its products to Oce on an OEM basis, from its entire product line.
• Production printing systems: Both companies will supply products to each other. Konica Minolta will supply light-production printing systems to Oce, while Oce will supply mid-and heavy-production printing systems to Konica Minolta.

This business partnership will provide Konica Minolta with entry to one of the most extensive provider in the industry for office as well as production printing systems and related software products.

Konica Minolta will promote the “genre-top strategy” (a strategy to concentrate the management resources on the most promising business areas and markets to ensure global leadership in these fields) in these growing markets, especially in the field of color printing systems. In this way, Konica Minolta aims to achieve group-wide growth and maximize its corporate value.