Business News

Kirtas Technologies Opens European Subsidiary in the Netherlands

Wednesday 30. January 2008 - Kirtas Technologies, the leader in quality, high-speed, nondestructive book digitization, today announced the opening of a European subsidiary to capture and better service the considerable growth potential for book digitization in Europe.

Kirtas Europe, B.V., is located in Southeast Amsterdam and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kirtas Technologies. Beginning 1 February, the office will provide systems and service support to resellers, agents and end users providing mass digitization in the European market.

Digitization of bound books — particularly out-of-print collections — provides an entirely new generation of users with access to historic documents that can now be electronically archived, made searchable on the Web, and made available for print-on-demand or as e-books.

“This new subsidiary enables us to bring our products, service and support closer to our customers, as well as provide a more efficient support infrastructure to our European resellers and agents,” said Kirtas Founder and CEO Lotfi Belkhir. “Europe is a significant market for digitization, because every European country is steeped in its own unique culture, history and language. This is a major step in helping to preserve that knowledge and make it accessible to the world.”

Marcel Aldewereld has been named general manager and chief operating officer of Kirtas Europe. Aldewereld has nearly 30 years of sales, marketing and operations experience with IBM and Xerox in the Netherlands. Most recently, he was the sales director for KPN Telecom and the general manager of Interstar Consultancies in Amsterdam.