Leading the world in digital print finishing solutions

"For digital print finishing, we can proudly say we are the world-leading company," said Eijiro Hori, president of Horizon International. The company was established 69 years ago, in 1946, by Hori's father.

"At first the company was involved in electrical instruments but, not long after, my father decided to change direction and enter the graphics industry by developing book-binding machinery," Hori said. Today, Horizon's factory in Shiga is ISO 9001 and 14001-certified, and is the world's largest of its kind. It produces high-quality products for folding, collating, binding, stitching and cutting documents.

While Horizon International enjoys its leading position worldwide for digital print finishing solutions, competition in the global market is tough. Most of its strongest competitors come from the printing industry's birthplace - Germany.

Despite this, "... we have successfully managed to expand into Germany and Europe as a whole, regardless of the strong competition we face," said Hori. His company now exports to 100 different countries, with its most important partners located in the United States, Europe and China. Fully 60 percent of the company's production is exported from Japan, and 10 percent of its export sales revenue comes from China.

Hori highlighted the growing importance of neighboring China as a market for digital printing. "We will be expanding more into China, so we need to keep developing our machines to specifically fit its market," he said. "We definitely have the ability to do it and deliver it to the highest standards since we design, develop and manufacture all our products in-house."

www.horizon.co.jp

World Eye Reports provided the story.

(China Daily 06/18/2015 page24)