Jobo Press Release

Gummersbach, Germany. JOBO AG will present a digital Minilab at this year’s PHOTOKINA exhibition in Cologne, Germany. The Minilab “LumeJet 1500 TM combines 80 years of photo processing experience of JOBO with the latest imaging exposure technology from DigePrint. A fully working Minilab unit will be shown at PHOTOKINA 2006 in Hall 6, C020/024. Concurrent with this transition to Digital Minilab Imaging, JOBO will announce the discontinuation of all JOBO brand Autolab series, Printlab, ProDry, paper dryers and color processors effective October 2006.

In recent years JOBO has continuously overcompensated for the steady decline of its dark room business with innovative digital product introductions. Presently, the digital business represents more than 85% of JOBO world-wide sales. In fact, manufacturing the traditional analog processors for a profitable return is no longer possible. Therefore JOBO CEO Johannes Bockemühl-Simon has been forced to make the unfortunate decision of discontinuing this product line. Thus, JOBO is adapting to the decline of traditional film processing. The intent is to transfer our 80 years of know-how and expertise in silver halide processing technology into the growing Digital Printing market. Discontinuing our processing machines was no doubt a hard decision for JOBO to make. The well known JOBO brand processors have long been established world-wide as a professional, high-quality photo product line. JOBO’s strong brand image of today is a heritage from these superior analog products.

JOBO is all the more excited to announce the introduction of the first JOBO Digital Minilab, which has been developed jointly with our partners from Digeprint headquartered in the UK. The unique combination of our silver-halide processing knowledge and the highly innovative technology from Digeprint make us very confident that we will be offering a highly competitive product printing solution. “This innovation and professional quality level can be expected from JOBO.” says Johannes Bockemuehl, JOBO CEO. “Of course we will continue to provide spare parts for existing machines in the market, and we will also continue to provide analog processing accessories.  In a double sense we continue to develop. On the one hand we develop new digital machines, on the other we keep developing paper prints.”

As the JOBO ATL-era draws to a close, the LumeJet 1500 represents a new Digital Printing era for JOBO. The new Minilab will process digital input and provide excellent quality onto analog output in 400 dpi resolution. Our JOBO product development goal remains the same …For Your Best Image.

Company:
JOBO AG - Founded in Gummersbach, Germany in 1923 the company quickly gained world-wide market recognition for the development of the legendary Jobo-Tanks and JOBO drums – allowing photographers and labs to process their own black & white films and prints. With the development of automated film processors, JOBO soon became a well known and respected player within the arena of photo laboratories.

Today the mid-sized company is consistently focused on the digital future and has gained flexibility in the photo market while keeping the high quality standard typical for the German “Mittelstand”. The current JOBO digital product range includes innovative storage back-up devices, card readers, adapters, flash cards, inkjet paper and now even digital Minilabs.