Press Centre

Xaar plc, based in Cambridge, UK and MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG, based in Augsburg, Germany are pleased to announce a joint collaboration to explore and develop digital inkjet printing systems for coating applications to be used in traditional offset printing presses, including MAN Roland’s innovative DICOweb press.

Both companies are world leaders in their respective fields and share a common belief that hybrid digital/analogue printing solutions have a major role to play in addressing a growing range of printing requirements.

Commenting on the announcement Nigel Berry, Deputy Chief Executive of Xaar and head of business development said: “In our 2003 Annual Report we communicated our belief that digital inkjet printing complements traditional printing methods and brings added value to the end-user of hybrid printing solutions. I am therefore particularly pleased to be able to announce our collaboration with MAN Roland to explore these exciting new possibilities and look forward to reporting on future progress in this area.“

ENDS

About Xaar
Xaar plc is a market-leading inkjet technology company. It targets the world’s office, commercial and industrial printing markets. The office printing market is approached through Xaar’s licensees; the industrial printing market is targeted by XaarJet, the manufacturing arm of Xaar; and a combination of partners and key players work with Xaar to serve the commercial printing market. Vivid Print Innovations Inc., the applications division of Xaar, provides Xaar’s in-house specialist integration service.

About MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG
MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG, Offenbach, is the world's second largest printing systems manufacturer and the world's market leader in web press offset. MAN Roland operates out of Offenbach, Augsburg and Plauen in Germany. It employs 10,000 staff and has annual sales of EUR 1.5 billion, with an export share of 80%. Web and sheetfed offset presses as well as digital printing systems are the major product lines for publishing, general commercial, and packaging printing. The field of business ranges from small-format sheetfed presses to production systems for newspaper printing in runs of millions. MAN Roland is a subsidiary company of MAN Aktiengesellschaft, Munich. The MAN group is one of Europe's leading suppliers of capital goods from the fields of commercial vehicle manufacturing and engineering with 64,000 employees and annual sales of EUR 14 billion.

For more information, please contact:

Alex Challinor, Xaar plc
T: +44 (0)1223 423663
achallinor@xaar.co.uk
www.xaar.co.uk

Laura French
T: +44 (0)1372 464470
lfrench@adcomms.co.uk