Barco NV

Barco N.V. (Euronext: BAR) is a display hardware manufacturer specialising in video projectors, LCD projectors, DLP projectors, LCoS projectors, LED displays, video walls, flat panel displays, automated luminaires, digital lighting and lighting controls.

Barco is headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium, and has facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Worldwide, Barco employs more than 3,500 people and realised sales of 897 million euros in 2010.

Active markets

Barco offers display and visualization solutions for professional markets. The company designs and develops solutions for large screen visualization, display solutions for life-critical applications, and systems for visual inspection. Currently Barco is active in the markets of control rooms, traffic, surveillance, broadcasting, presentation, simulation and virtual reality, edutainment, events, media, digital cinema, air traffic control, defense and security, medical imaging, and avionics.

History

Barco is an acronym that originally stood for Belgian American Radio COrporation.

Acquisitions

• Barco Graphics was the graphics division of the Belgian Barco Group. It was the result of the 1989 merger of Digitised Information Systems Corporation (D.I.S.C.), Aesthedes and Barco's own "Creative Group".
• In 1997, Barco acquired EIS (Electronic Image Systems), a world leader in high brightness, high resolution calligraphic CRT projectors for the flight simulation market.
• In 1998, Barco Graphics acquired Gerber Systems Corporation, a US company active in Printed Circuit Boards plotters and AOI.
• In 2004, Barco acquired Voxar, a leading 3D medical imaging software company, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The same year, it also acquired Folsom Research, Inc, based in Rancho Cordova, California. Folsom's product lines cover solutions for image processing, image communication and image functionality & interactivity.
• In 2008, Barco acquired High End Systems, an automated luminaires, digital lighting and lighting controls company, based in Austin, Texas.
• In 2010, Barco acquired Fimi, a world leading company specialised in medical imaging. Fimi is based in Italy, Saronno. Also in 2010, Barco acquired all intellectual property of Element Labs, a manufacturer of LED equipment based in Santa Clara, California.
• In 2010, Barco acquired dZine, a Belgium based company specialized in Digital Signage solutions.

Divestments

• In the early 2000s, Barco Graphics was acquired by Belgian Purup-Eskofot, and renamed Esko-Graphics, which was again renamed Esko in 2006.
• In 2007, BarcoVision was acquired by Itema Group from Bergamo, Italy. [1]
• In 2008, Barco sold its Advanced Visualisation (AVIS) group (the previously acquired Voxar [2]) to Toshiba Medical (TMSC)[3].

External links

• Barco web site