New Name for Agfa Offset as Sale Completed

Private equity group Aurelius has announced the successful completion of the acquisition of Agfa Offset Solutions from the Agfa-Gevaert Group for €92 million. Following the completion, the business has been renamed ECO3, which it says stands for ‘Ecology, Economy and Extra Convenience’.

The company, which was Agfa-Gevaert’s largest division, is one of the leading global suppliers of prepress solutions to the offset printing industry. It had sales of €779 million in 2022, translating into a global market share of approximately 20%.

It is best known in the high security printing industry for FORTUNA, its security design software suite and for Asecuri, its all-in-one prepress workflow. In 2019 it partnered with Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions to create a streamlined software development and support service, combining the two companies’ software – Fortuna and ONE respectively. Late last year the two companies introduced ONE 4X, a so-called two-in-one solution that allows designers to better streamline their work whilst maintaining their current modules and tools to benefit from additional functionalities from either platform.

ECO3’s software development teams are located in Israel and at its HQ in Mortsel, Belgium, where it will continue to be located on the Agfa campus. It has direct sales and service organisations in more than 30 countries and, according to the company, it will have it will have the same organisational structure and customer-facing sales and service teams under the ownership of Aurelius.

Aurelius partner Christian Tebroke becomes interim CEO until a new permanent CEO is appointed.