Svecia preparing for 2005

The last years' general downturn on the market for screen printing machinery has led to lower price levels when suppliers wants to maintain a minimum level of production in their factories. Suppliers simply use a low price level as the competitive tool in order to fill the order books. Furthermore, the digital development affects the graphic industry in such way that many customers now evaluates investments in inkjet printers instead of new investments in screen printing machinery. Consequently, all suppliers in the business have faced economical problems.

Svecia has strategically chosen to act in a different way. We have during end of 2003 and the first half of 2004 reduced the operations for manufacturing screen-printing machinery in Sweden and instead established a structure for outsourced production. The operations are today primarily engineering and support centre with the main focus of providing first class support to customers worldwide and to handle customised and special purpose screen-printing machines. Hence, the pressure of "filling" the factory is eliminated which allows us to be more flexible for the future.

Svecia of today is a dedicated team still based in Norsborg outside Stockholm, Sweden. We have an assembly area for building customised machines and prototypes, an extensive warehouse for spare parts, and a workshop for manufacturing print tables and for subassembly. We work hard to improve our service level further to the extensive installed base (over 15,000) of Svecia equipment all over the world.

Some of the happenings during end of 2004:

- Two SAMX 4-colour lines sold.
- New generation of multi-colour machine designed.
- Concept for jumbo sized (2100x3300 mm and up) multicolour machines developed for several enquiries.
- Single colour machines (Sveciamatic and Printmasters) delivered to applications such as general graphics, telecom, glass, biomedicine, textile transfer et al.
- New type of ¾-automatic glass printing machine developed for customer project with quick set-up and easy handling, targeted for shorter production runs.
- Improved service level for after sales market.

Svecia's future will of course very much be determined by the general market development but even more on our success in increasing our market shares. We have now a steady business level with a solid foundation for future growth. For growth we will work hard and with a very long perspective: our firm ambition is gain market shares for new equipment and further improve our after sales support.

For further information please contact Anders Norlin

E-mail anders.norlin@svecia.se

Mobile number +46-705 67 55 17