Electronics for Imaging, Inc. (EFI) is an international company based in Silicon Valley that specializes in digital printing technology. Formerly located in Foster City, California, the company is now based in Fremont. On July 1, 2015, EFI entered the textile printing marketing with the acquisition of Italian digital textile company Reggiani Macchine. On June 16, 2016, EFI acquired Optitex, a 3D digital workflow provider.
Founded in 1989 in San Francisco by Israeli businessman Efi Arazi, EFI is known for producing the Fiery print server, a raster image processor used throughout the printing industry.
In April 2019, EFI announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Siris Capital Group, LLC in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.7 billion. In January 2022, the company completed the sale of its eProductivity Software print and packaging software business to Symphony Technology Group.
Company overview
Current operations
Following the late 2021 divestment of its EFI Productivity Software business unit, Electronics For Imaging has two business units: EFI Fiery and EFI Inkjet. The EFI Fiery business manufactures digital front ends and related software for digital printing operations. The EFI Inkjet business unit manufactures and sells UV, UV LED and dye-sublimation wide- and superwide-format printers for the signage/display graphics market, as well as industrial inkjet printers for the building materials, ceramic tile, corrugated packaging and textile markets.
EFI Fiery
The EFI Fiery business dates back to the founding of the company and its original digital front end (DFE) product, which allowed users to turn their color copiers into digital color printers. While originally used primarily in office printing environments, most Fiery DFEs today are developed for use with higher-volume "production level" toner or inkjet digital printing devices in commercial printing businesses and in-plant/central reproduction department facilities.
Fiery DFEs are used with toner and inkjet digital production printers, and wide- and superwide-format inkjet printers, from a variety of printer manufacturers. According to EFI, there have been more than 2 million Fiery DFEs sold worldwide.
The Fiery business unit manufactures its DFEs for specific print hardware manufacturers, including Konica Minolta, Xerox, Canon, and Ricoh, among others, providing custom computer hardware loaded with software – including Raster Image Processor, or RIP, software needed to interpret, render, and design files into color-separated images that the printer can produce.
The Fiery business also includes a range of workflow software products for digital printing used to streamline and automate various digital print prepress and production tasks, including color management; advanced prepress workflows; imposition and nesting; variable-data management; and job management between multiple digital print devices.
The Fiery business unit, which has principal facilities in the U.S., India, and Germany, also develops EFI IQ, a suite of cloud-based print management and business intelligence tools, and EFI Self-Serve products. Commonly used in school campuses, libraries, hotels and retail store environments, EFI Self-Serve terminals and software enable walk-up printing by consumers on digital printing equipment. Users can print files from USB drives, mobile devices, or cloud accounts.
EFI Inkjet
EFI primarily developed peripherals and software used with other companies’ printers until acquiring a superwide-format inkjet printer manufacturer, Meredith, N.H.-based VUTEk Inc., in 2005 for approximately $281 million. The company acquired its main inkjet ink manufacturing facility a year later. Then, in 2008, EFI acquired another U.S.-based inkjet technology company, Raster Printers. That was followed by the 2012 purchase of Cretaprint, a Spanish manufacturer of digital printers for the ceramic tile market, and two companies in 2015: Matan Digital Printers, an Israel-based manufacturer of roll-to-roll UV inkjet display graphics printers, and Reggiani Macchine, an Italian manufacturer of textile printers.