Agfa has no plans to acquire or merge with EFI, according to Arnaud Calleja, vice president of Digital Print Solutions at Agfa. He stated that rumours suggesting merger with EFI or a takeover of EFI following their recent decision to share technology, were completely wrong.
Addressing the rumours at a press conference held at Fespa in Amsterdam, Calleja made it clear in his comments when asked about the long-term ramifications of the recent decision to collaborate.
In late January, Agfa and EFI announced they had entered into a global strategic partnership aimed at leveraging each other’s technologies. As a result, EFI has sourced the Agfa Tauro platform, and Agfa has sourced EFI’s five-metre platform. Calleja said, “I do not see Agfa as the David and EFI as the Goliath – I think we are of a comparable size, but with EFI being a bit bigger than what we are when it comes to digital solutions for sign and display.
“EFI is a great competitor, and we will continue to compete. We’ve decided – both EFI and Agfa – to share some of our portfolio. We would like to have our Condor in our portfolio, and EFI has expressed a need to bring the Tauro into their portfolio. Why? To offer our customers worldwide the best assortment of printers and solutions. There is no merger, there is no take-over, it is a combination of printers and an exchange of printers, and we will continue to compete as we were before,” he said.
“As Agfa, we could not reach some customers because they are EFI customers – now we can – through EFI and vice-versa – this extends our reach to the whole market, and we are very happy about that. It is a benefit to us, and it is a benefit to them. In terms of what is coming next – I don’t know. We are very pragmatic at Agfa, and we know EFI is as well. We would like this first step to work, and we will make it work – there will be challenges down the road, but we want to test this first step.
“Maybe something down the road will come, but at this time, we are focused on the Tauro on the EFO side and the Condor on our side – this is currently what the partnership is about.
“Agfa is always open to opportunities. What we are doing with EFI has nothing to do with an acquisition, and Agfa does not take over EFI, and EFI does not take over Agfa. We are partnering through an exchange – and I would like this point to be very clear – there is nothing hidden behind this. It is a commercial agreement, but we are always looking at acquisitions if there is an opportunity.
“Right now, we have one of the best and largest assortments of products in the market, and everything we need to grow, so making an acquisition would make sense, but all of the ingredients are currently there for us to grow.”
“Our position at Agfa is towards the high end—Tauros and Onset—and we consider the Anapurna Ciervo the entry-level platform. Are we looking at going to the lower level with smaller machines? This is not necessarily our strategy.
In his press conference, EFI vice president worldwide of marketing Ken Hanulec also referenced the collaboration between the two businesses.
He said, “We just made the announcement less than 90 days ago, and it is a commercial agreement where we filled a gap in our portfolio, and they filed a gap in their portfolio. I believe any time you have competing distribution channels, there will always be some healthy competition in the marketplace.
“We decided to make this strategic commercial agreement because there is more opportunity for each company rather than a reason for consolidation or conflict, and we will see how that plays out – but this is the start of our relationship as purely a commercial agreement on the product side.”
