Citizen Systems Europe celebrates 25th anniversary

This year marks the silver anniversary of Citizen Systems Europe, the manufacturer of high quality label, barcode and industrial printers. Since being established the company has grown to become a major supplier of simple to use and reliable specialised printers, with an extensive network of European distributors providing value added application and support services.
 
Citizen Europe, as the company was then known, was founded 25 years ago in London as the sales and marketing arm for Citizen desktop dot matrix printers. The company then opened a factory in Scunthorpe, which was at one time the most efficient dot matrix facility anywhere in the world producing up to 40,000 printers each month. It was around this time that the company introduced the first laser printers onto the market, as well as the first dot matrix printers with multilingual LCD control panels.
 
With the shift in global manufacturing to the Far East in the 1990s, Citizen moved its production facilities to Japan and China, where they remain, to provide its customers with competitively priced technology. Following this stage in the companys history, Citizen Systems Europe began to specialise in the label and barcode thermal printers for which it is best known for today.
 
Although high quality printers have always been at the centre of Citizens business, the company has also been known for developing other state-of-the-art technologies. For example, at one time it was the largest manufacturer in the world of floppy disk drives, supplying Compaq in Scotland with hundreds of thousands of units a month, and also produced hard drives for Hewlett Packard. Interestingly, Citizen was also producer of many of the original Compaq laptops and our knowledge of this was used in perhaps our most innovative development a miniature laptop produced in collaboration with IBM, the PC110. Smaller than a hardback book or video cassette, this fully functional palm top laptop was way-ahead-of-its-time when it was introduced over 15 years ago, and was the precursor for todays compact PDA and Netbook devices.
 
The company is also a manufacturer of crystals, used as the timing component in watches, microcomputers and PCs, and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), as well as producing small Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) for some of the worlds biggest mobile phone brands. In addition, Citizen has developed and continues to sell a wide range of calculators from pocket and desktop to scientific models.
 
Today, Citizen operates across Europe through its network of value added resellers, providing customers in a wide range of industries with the very latest printing technology. Citizen Systems Europe is a wholly owned subsidiary of Citizen Systems Japan Co Ltd, which is itself a subsidiary of the world famous watch company, Citizen Holdings Co Ltd.
 
Citizen Systems Europe
Citizen Systems Europe operates from locations throughout Europe covering the EMEA region. It offers a wide range of printers for industrial, retail, healthcare and mobile applications specialising in label, barcode, portable and point-of-sale printers.  In each case, the companys products are sold and supported by a network of specialised partners.
 
Citizen Systems Europe is a wholly owned subsidiary of Citizen Systems Japan and part of the Citizen group of companies, a global organisation that manufactures products ranging from its world-famous Eco-Drive watches, calculators, mini-printers and industrial printing systems to machine tools, quartz oscillators, LEDs and other electronic components.
 
For further information contact Mark Beauchamp, European Marketing Manager, Citizen Systems Europe, 643 - 651 Staines Road, Feltham, Middlesex, TW14 8PA.
Tel: 020 8893 1900. Fax: 020 8893 0080
Email: mbeauchamp@citizen-europe.com
Web: www.citizen-europe.com