Leading Italian ink jet printing company MS bought by US corporation Dover

Dover (NYSE: DOV), a Fortune 500 industrial conglomerate based in Illinois/USA, announced the acquisition of the Italian MS Printing Solutions S.r.l. (“MS”),  a leading designer, manufacturer and distributor of innovative digital ink jet printing systems and associated consumables serving the textile and specialty material markets[1].

The Dover group has over 30 constituent companies that generated $8.7 billion in revenues in 2013 from various industrial segments including communications technology, energy, engineered systems as well as Printing & Identification, consisting of four companies: Markem-imaje, Datamax-O’Neil, and OK International.

With only 70 employees and an approximate turnover of 70 mio USD, The Italian company MS is the technology leader in premium ink jet printers for textile applications.  The company’s family of paper printing products has a print width of 1.8 meters, and throughput ranging from 155 to 500 square meters per hour. Their digital printer model LaRio, launched in 2011, has captured the attention of the industry as the fastest printer in the market which can finally put the digital revolution in textile printing to a higher gear. LaRio leads the industry with its maximum throughput of over 8,000 square meter per hour. For the first time, ink jet printers  for textiles have become competitive in productivity vs. the widely established rotary screen printing technology.

With this new ownership and financial backing, it will be exiting to follow whether MS can accelerate the growth of digital printing systems in the market.

[1] DOVER ACQUIRES MS PRINTING SOLUTIONS S.R.L.