 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary of Veralto Corporation (NYSE: VLTO) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Graphic arts |
| Founded | Ghent, Belgium (2002) |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Joel Depernet |
Number of employees | 1800 (2018) |
| Website | www |
Esko, formerly called EskoArtwork, is a graphic arts company producing prepress software and hardware for the packaging and labels, sign and display and publishing industries. [1] Esko is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium and is a subsidiary of Veralto Corporation. [2]
Esko was the result of a merger between Barco Graphics and Purup-Eskofot A/S in 2001. [3] The merged company was called Esko-Graphics but was renamed Esko in 2006. In the fall of 2005, Esko became fully owned by Axcel, a Danish private financial company. [4]
In August 2007 Esko announced that it was 'joining forces' [5] with Artwork Systems Group NV (AWS), its chief competitor in the packaging prepress market. [6] Esko initially bought 76.69% of AWS shares for €196 million. [7] Enfocus, a brand of PDF pre-flighting and workflow software originally acquired by Artwork Systems in 2000, became a subsidiary of the combined EskoArtwork company. [8]
Reflecting the merger, Esko changed its name to EskoArtwork. It also introduced a new logo, though it is visually very close to the Esko original.
In January 2011, 100% of EskoArtwork shares have been transferred to Danaher. [9] In January 2012, the name changed back to Esko, the logo was also updated. Esko acquired CAPE Systems [10] (a palletization software vendor) in 2013, MediaBeacon [11] (a Digital Asset Management vendor) in 2015 and Blue Software, LLC [12] (a label and artwork management software vendor) in 2018. At the end of September 2023, Danaher spun-off its Environmental and Applied Solutions segment as Veralto Corporation. [13]