South Korean graphic arts equipment agent Alles International has added Goss International to its portfolio.

Managing director B.S. Park says the appointment as agent for the country is "a great win for the company".

The three-year-old company plans to exploit Goss's strengths not only in the newspaper and web segments, but in packaging with the Goss Vpak platform, where Park (pictured) says he and his colleagues are especially eager to start exploring opportunities.

"South Korea continues to see steady growth in packaging and is predicted to rank solidly among the world top ten packaging producers across almost all packaging sectors over the next five years," he says. "The versatility of Vpak across film and board applications and its easy integration with other packaging processes and technologies offers great potential as developments unfold. What's more, here as in many other countries, we're seeing a clear trend towards more package versions or SKUs, which makes us optimistic that the timing is right to introduce Vpak technology to this market."

Goss hopes to gain advantage from Alles' established presence in the market and expertise across a broad range of print disciplines. The company will be responsible for the sales, installation, parts and servicing of Goss' web offset systems and ancillaries for commercial printing, newspaper publishing and packaging print production including the Goss Uniliner, M-600 and Sunday press systems.

"Goss has an excellent range of well-established products for this market, offering choice and flexibility in all key areas," says park. "Being able to offer a wide variety of technologies purposely designed for 4x1 newspaper production is a real strength, for example.

"It will help create an open dialogue and exchange of ideas with customers about possibilities for both immediate requirements and future aspirations."

Based in Seoul, Alles International was founded in 2012 and promotes itself as a total solutions specialist for print service providers in Korea. Its client portfolio includes Fuji Xerox, X-rite, technotrans, Heidelberg and Agfa.

Managing director of Goss Asia Pacific Tim Mercy says the company has already been impressed by Alles' professionalism and business vision: "Their stated mission is to deliver the best total solution for every customer, encompassing the highest quality, most professional service and the best individual products for each stage in their print production chain.

"We can supply the latter and we feel very confident that our end customers will be in safe hands regarding the rest."