SUPPLIER news

Two appointments have been made at manroland Inc. John Zenner has been designated to the newly created position of director of customer satisfaction, responsible for strengthening the company's Total Customer Care initiative. Tom Lang has been hired as regional sales manager, sheetfed, for Western Canada, covering Toronto and west to Vancouver.

Xerox Corp. has launched RealBusiness.com, an interactive Website that is part of the company's "Ready for Real Business" global marketing campaign—one of Xerox's largest campaigns to date that includes a mix of print, television, Web and airport advertising. The Website explores how Xerox helps iconic brands with business process and document management, and integrates both customer testimonials and offerings, from IT outsourcing to finance and accounting, document management and human resources support.

To celebrate its 65th year in business and its 20th year as a U.S. corporation, Sakurai USA hosted an open house and vendor trade fair at its Schaumburg, IL, headquarters in August. Sakurai press crews conducted fast makeready demonstrations running posters of Chicago scenes on a 20x26˝, four-color 466SDC offset press with coater using plates from Mitsubishi Imaging.

Chris Lyons has been appointed Kodak's new global segment director to oversee activity in the company's six primary industry segments: commercial printing, publishing, packaging, data-driven printing, enterprise and photo products.

At BCC Software, Don Phillips Jr. has been named vice president of customer services. Prior to joining BCC Software, he served at Ventraq Inc. as director of customer operations.

GMG has appointed Micha Moses vice president of strategic alliances. He previously held a variety of management positions in sales and OEM business development at Adobe Systems and XMPie.

Charles Murray has been tapped as president of Sun Chemical's North American ink business. He succeeds Brian Leen, who left the graphic arts industry after an 18-year career at the company. Murray most recently served as managing director and corporate vice president of Sun Chemical's business in the UK, Ireland and Nordic markets since 2004.

Konica Minolta Graphic Imaging has sold its offset printing plate business, including subsidiary American Litho-
plate, to Southern Lithoplate.

Two new hires have been announced at Braden Sutphin Ink. Kevin Kennedy has been named technical sales representative covering Minnesota. And, John Tranor has joined as a flexographic technical service representative, responsible for supporting the company's 15 national branches and flexo client base. He is based in Cincinnati.

Dr. Nigel Sherman has been selected for the newly created position of business development manager at Inca Digital. As a chartered physicist, Sherman previously served in the digital printing sector, working with Videojet on new product development, and then in business development for an optical switch company.

Gavin Drake has been promoted to vice president of marketing for Quark Inc. He reports to Ray Schiavone, president and CEO of Quark. Based in Denver, Drake is now responsible for overseeing the company's global marketing efforts.

RISO Inc. has expanded its relationship with Kodak to offer customers the RISO ComColor full-color cutsheet inkjet printer as a complementary solution for Kodak's Versamark VL-Series printing systems, as well as the Kodak Versamark VT3000 and VX5000 Plus printing systems.

Steve Hosford has been named Value Added Reseller (VAR) channel sales manager, North America, for Enfocus. He previously held the position of sales director at both X-Rite Inc. and Smartstuff Graphics Distribution.

At Komori America, David Benner has been named district sales manager, now responsible for the company's sales of new and used web and sheetfed presses in the Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and Northern Kentucky regions. In other news, Komori has entered into a partnership with Diversified Graphic Machinery that will allow Komori customers the opportunity to integrate Diversified Graphic Machinery's cold foil and UV Cast and Cure technologies into their existing Lithrone presses for packaging applications.

More than 100 U.S. printers that witnessed MeadWestvaco Corp.'s (MWV) "Tango Advantage Challenge" program have reported positive results. Under identical printing conditions, participants compared Tango Advantage coated cover against competitive board and coated cover products. According to MWV, the printers agreed that Tango Advantage delivered better ink holdout, dot fidelity and runnability, resulting in a better printed image.

Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA) has appointed Axel Kaufmann as the company's new CFO. He formerly served as head of business insight and planning at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). PI