Zetes has announced the creation of a new subsidiary in Israel, Zetes, located in Tel Aviv.

Zetes has announced the creation of a new subsidiary in Israel, Zetes, located in Tel Aviv. Founded with a local partner, Eli Harel (see hereafter), Zetes is controlled by Zetes Industries who has a 70 % ownership interest in the venture. The company will initially employ 2 people.

Zetes is the first direct implementation of the Zetes Group outside Europe where Zetes has subsidiaries in 9 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and UK).

By combining a country organisation close to the local market with the broad range of competences made available by a leading international player, Zetes is uniquely positioned to bring the best Auto-ID products, solution components, practice and know how to the Israeli market.

Zetes in Israel Although Zetes' strategic focus remains to strengthen its direct presence in Europe, in large countries in particular, Zetes considers the time more than right to enter the Israeli market where customers are more and more becoming multinational companies demanding technology providers and partners with international scope.

Competing in an increasingly international environment, these customers command modern and efficient mission critical Auto-ID solutions (such as mobile sales and services applications, distribution and warehouse management tools) that can give them an edge over the competition.

Providing such solutions requires a broad range of innovative technologies (mobile computing, voice directed systems, RFID) combined with high-value competences and services, an investment which is not always attainable for the smaller local player.

Due to its international development and resulting critical mass , Zetes has always been uniquely positioned to invest in these technologies and services and is therefore able to deliver this broad range of innovative and solid solutions to the market.

With Eli Harel's very strong experience of the local Auto-ID market, Zetes found the right partner to channel these solutions to the Israeli customers.

Zetes Group In the Auto-ID industry, Zetes is deploying value-added solutions providing their users with the most appropriate selection of technologies and services, according to their business needs and industry-specific issues (manufacturing, transport and logistics, distribution, mobile sales and services).

Thousands of private and public customers are currently benefiting from Zetes' global and integrated Identification and Mobility solutions.

These solutions use both emerging and mature technologies for data capture (barcode, voice recognition, RFID) and communication (Wireless LAN and WAN, Personal Area Network such as Bluetooth), and take advantage of best RandD and products from Zetes' pan-European partners and industry leaders among which Symbol, Vocollect, Intermec and Zebra.

Having generated consolidated revenues of 139,5 million in 2005, with a high level of growth compared with 2004 ( 100,8 million), the Zetes Group currently employs 455 highly skilled and experienced people.

Global resources At both international and local levels, Zetes provides its customers with the benefits of a pan-European partner thanks to its globally coordinated competence centres.

These centralised teams of experts focus on specific business domains and enabling technologies (Voice, RFID, Print and Apply).

Tapping into the available expertise and know-how of every country organisation, they concentrate, enrich and disseminate this expertise across the group, also building standardised, configurable solution components and assisting the country organisations with the deployment of these components in their specific projects.

Thanks to this approach and in only three years, Zetes has succeeded to become the leader in the European Voice market for industrial applications (order picking, cross docking) with its own solutions' portfolio, the 3i Voice Solution, an open environment supporting best-of-class technologies on both specific voice platforms from the industry leader, Vocollect, and non-dedicated devices such as those offered by Symbol.

Strong local responsiveness 'Zetes' international development and the resulting critical mass allowed our company to build these centralised competence centres and to ride waves that typical local players cannot', comments Alain Wirtz, CEO of the Zetes Group.

'These transnational resources perfectly complement our decentralised country model that provides our customers with local points of contact, solutions, support and services, delivered by country organisations fully responsible for their operations'.

The local co-founder of Zetes , Eli Harel, has been appointed as Managing Director.

'With Eli's experience and entrepreneurial spirit, we are confident that Zetes will become a leading player in the Auto-ID Israeli market', adds Alain Wirtz.

Eli Harel has a BScandEE in Electronics Engineering from the Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva (1972).

From 1973 to 1979 he held positions in the Israeli Navy and Government with responsibilities for various information technology functions and assignments.

In the last 20 years Eli held various leading positions both in management and technical roles in the Israeli Auto-ID industry, gaining in-depth knowledge of the customers' needs and the technologies and solutions to address these needs.