Bibliotheca Group are pleased to announce the acquisition of Aturis Group, a leading provider of library solutions in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
With offices in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, Aturis (formed in 2002) has built a strong and diverse customer base, with a focus on outstanding delivery and customer service, together with understanding the complexities of installing everything from staff stations through to full Automated Material Handling systems. This has been achieved through the building of a dedicated team of individuals who are committed to understanding libraries, their needs and how technology can support those needs.
With immediate effect, Aturis Netherlands BV and Aturis Belgium BvbA will be integrated directly into the Bibliotheca Group and will commence trading as local Bibliotheca entities, whilst Aturis Deutschland GmbH will merge with Bibliotheca Germany. All business units will have access to the full Group product catalogue, and development has already commenced to integrate existing Aturis products into the central Bibliotheca product line.
Thomas Aufermann, Managing Director Bibliotheca Group Central Europe, will lead the new business units and commented: "The opportunity to create functional and technological synergies between the existing teams and enlarge our market scope presents a great opportunity for our customers as well as for our business. We are looking forward to the joint engagement in the German, Dutch and Belgian market."
Wim Markus, MD of Aturis, who will join the Bibliotheca Central Europe team additionally said "We are all incredibly excited by the opportunity to join the global library technology leader, a decision that will allow us to grow the business and offer a greater range of solutions to our customers. Even at the early stages of discussion between our companies, we instinctively knew that this was the right move for our customers and employees alike. We are all eager to begin discussions with our customers to deliver even greater value from their existing investments through the availability of new and exciting solutions."
Jim Hopwood, Bibliotheca Group Managing Director added: "The addition of Aturis to the Bibliotheca Group now allows us to substantially improve our offerings and service levels in the Dutch and Belgium markets, whilst further consolidating our market-leading position in Germany. We are delighted to have Wim and his team join the Group, and we look forward to delivering the benefits of this integration to our customers."
Existing customers of Aturis will see no change to their existing support and maintenance agreements, and all existing products will be supported as normal. All customers will now, however, be able to take advantage of the existing, award-winning, Bibliotheca Group product range and will see additional benefits in the form of increased service hours, additional local field engineers and a global team.
About Bibliotheca
Formed from the merger of three of the biggest library technology companies in the world to combine knowledge, expertise and market intelligence, Bibliotheca is now the largest company dedicated to the development, deployment and support of RFID, EM/RFID hybrid and barcode-based library solutions. With offices in eleven countries and distribution partnerships in over thirty-five others, we are proud to hold over 4,000 unique library customers with a deployed equipment range of 20,000 items, which includes nearly 6,000 self-checkout kiosks and over 400 automated materials handling (AMH) systems. We develop solutions that facilitate and enhance library operations. Together with libraries, we implement the best functioning, easiest to use, most cost efficient self-service and automation systems available.
