EFI has announced its acquisition of Group Rhapso, a printing and packaging software developer based in France, as part of its investment in productivity tools. The digital print giant states that it hopes to further its position in the workflow automation market.

Rhapso has two main software products. The Rhapso Graphisoft MIS is primarily for Francophone organisations, while the Rhapso PC-Topp scheduling and production control solution is for the corrugated industry, sold world-wide and available in 13 lanaguages. The company's MIS and ERP products will be added to the current line of EFI productivity software. Graphisoft will be integrated with EFI Fiery, the digital front end platform for Xerox, Canon, Ricohand Konica Minolta printers and copiers.

"Rhapso gives EFI the opportunity to further extend our leading-edge capabilities in the packaging market," says Marc Olin, EFI's chief operating officer. "This is a strong and complementary addition to our growing portfolio of MIS [and] ERP solutions.

"With our strong presence in Europe, the acquisition of Rhapso now extends our scope of offering into the corrugated market sector as a new growth opportunity and builds upon our strong existing presence in the MIS and scheduling area," he concludes.