At a joint press conference last week on the eve of the Digi:media show in Düsseldorf, Germany, Heidelberg chief executive Bernhard Schreier said the partners had formed a "joint innovation council", with a view to develop and integrate new products.
"We will maybe have for Drupa some new and fancy ideas on how this collaboration can emerge into other spheres," said Schreier.
The companies declined to reveal more detail on the potential new products, which some industry sources speculated could simply focus on cross-platform workflow or colour management enhancements all the way up to hardware developments.
Both Heidelberg and Ricoh exhibited at Digi:media last week, where the former demonstrated a prototype version of Prinect with a centralised workflow for both offset and digital running a Speedmaster SM 52 Anicolor and a Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition digital press live on its stand.
Speaking the day before the show opened, Heidelberg's Schreier acknowledged the difficulties printers face when sourcing finance for digital kit, and confirmed that the company would offer bundled deals, with kit or consumables, although he stressed this would be decided on "country by country basis".
The Heidelberg and Ricoh partnership will largely, but not exclusively, focus on the Ricoh Pro C901 model. At last week's event, the companies revealed that reseller agreements had been signed in the UK and Germany, the first two roll-outs of its non-exclusive Ricoh partnership, earlier this month. Heidelberg Germany has already secured its first sale.
According to Schreier, Heidelberg will have completed its phased roll-out to its European direct sales territories, by next May, with the deal being rolled out in the US later in 2012.
Simon Sasaki, chairman and chief executive of Ricoh Europe, said: "The synergies of our partnership are clear… Heidelberg can satisfy its loyal customers with a proven digital production solution from Ricoh. And we, in turn, can see more commercial printers benefiting from the productivity and flexibility of our digital production systems."
The Ricoh tie-up followed Heidelberg USA's deal in January to become a reseller, in the commercial print market, of a number of EFI Vutek wide-format engines.
Heidelberg has a distribution deal with Konica Minolta in Australia.
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