Ricoh Europe acquires Dutch MSP

Japanese print vendor snaps up Microsoft partner in the Netherlands

Ricoh Europe has announced it has acquired Dutch reseller Avantage, in a move the vendor claims will help its partners grow their managed services capabilities.

The €15.54bn Japan-headquartered print vendor has been on an acquisition spree in its EMEA business in recent years.

Ricoh Europe SVP Alberto Mariani said its latest buy will give European partners access to new offerings, particularly around document management.

"Avantage offers the perfect fit for Ricoh in terms of customers, employees, propositions, and size," he said.

"It also complements other areas of our business such as document management solutions, workflow solutions and print services to provide customers with truly dependable extensive service and support."

Founded in 1990, and based in Rotterdam, Avantage will operate as a Ricoh subsidiary and report its results separately.

The Microsoft partner has a headcount of over 200 people.

Ricoh did not disclose the terms of the transaction.

In the last twelve months, Ricoh has also built out is portfolio in other areas, via technology-specific acquisitions.

In September, Ricoh made a twin acquisition of DataVision in Germany and SimplicITy in Poland to expand its AV and workplace management solutions.

A month later, it bought out European reseller MTI, which Ricoh said was to "strengthen its datacentre transformation solutions, hybrid cloud, cyber security and managed services".

The vendor's buying spree has continued unabated despite telling investors last month that it has incurred impairment losses across the group to the tune of 2,641m million yen (€2.3m).

Ricoh said it was its commercial printing business that was hit, due to COVID-19.

"The commercial printing business was affected by the decline in customers' willingness to invest due to the uncertainty over their business's future caused by the spread of the COVID-19," the company said.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group logged worldwide sales in its FY 2020 of 2,008bn yen (€15.54bn).