London, 11 August 2005

Riso (UK), the leading high volume, low cost printer manufacturer, announces the Green Party in Ireland as the latest customer of the Riso HC5000, the world's fastest sheet-fed full colour A3 inkjet printer. The Green Party has invested in this technology to bring fast and reliable printing capability in-house as part of its efforts to prepare itself for the forthcoming Irish general elections due to be held within the next 18 months. The HC5000 clinched the deal based on its speed of 105 A4 pages per minute, a cost per full colour copy that's dramatically lower than the screen printing cost of 4.5 € cents per page and the environmentally friendly features of the machine.

The Green Party has already identified 15 candidates who will stand in the next general election. Each of these candidates will be targeting constituencies of around 20,000 - 30,000 voters which means the Green Party will need to print very large volumes of leaflets, newsletters and other public statements. Using traditional printing methods in this situation is not only time consuming, but also very expensive. The HC5000 is most suited for high volume print runs and can easily print volumes of up to 250,000 pages per month. Also, the unique technology of the machine has made paper misfeeds a thing of the past.

In addition, it's critical for the Party to have in-house printing capability that enables it to shorten production timescales enabling them to effectively communicate the Party's messages and speedily counter act claims by competing parties. The HC5000 also allows inexpensive short print runs which will enable the Party to tailor messages relevant to specific areas within the constituencies. This is not possible using traditional printing technology both from a time and cost perspective.

Dermot Hamilton, General Secretary of the Green Party, comments: "We took a strategic decision to bring printing in-house as it was proving to be very time consuming and expensive to outsource all our printing. We researched the market and the only product that fit our requirements was the HC5000. Due to its features, specifically the cost and speed advantages, the HC5000 is the best product for our specific needs. We are now in a position to not only offer printing services to the 15 identified candidates in Ireland, but gradually extend our services to the 42 groups in Ireland which include the Green Party in Northern Ireland."

Richard Thompson, Managing Director, Riso (UK) adds: "The HC5000 is fast becoming the machine of choice for organisations that see the value in bringing colour printing in-house. Outsourced colour printing is traditionally slow and expensive and can be difficult to do in situations where confidentiality is an issue. Many of our HC5000 customers are Government organisations who have chosen to in-source printing in order to get control of the costs, improve the turnaround times and maintain confidentiality."