Zeutschel GmbH Celebrates 60 Years in the Digitization Field
The Crowley Company’s longtime partner, Zeutschel GmbH, celebrated their 60th year in business in December 2021. The following blog, written by Zetuschel, is reposted with permission and details their growth as a market leader in the still media digitization technology field.
What do the manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach, the written correspondence of Abraham Lincoln and the Cuban diary entries of Alexander von Humboldt have in common? They were all digitized with the scanning solutions from Zeutschel GmbH. The Tübingen, Germany company is now celebrating its 60th birthday and is pleased about the largest order intake in the company’s history. Growth drivers are new high-performance scanners for newspapers, plans and other historical large format materials.
Libraries and archives around the world are digitizing their valuable historical books and other documents to make the world’s knowledge available to the general public. One of these libraries is the Universitäts-Bibliothek Heidelberg. The University library is pursuing the goal of making its valuable manuscripts and printed matter freely and sustainably available on the internet.
For this task, the library’s digitization center uses scanning solutions from Zeutschel. Founded in 1961 as a supplier of microfilm systems, the Tübingen company is now the world market leader in digital scanning technology.
“Zeutschel sells more scanners than the second and third market leaders combined,” explains Jörg Vogler, Managing Director of Zeutschel GmbH, explains, “At least one Zeutschel system is in use in almost every national library and in every national archive in the world.”
The customers are on all continents and range from the Berlin State Library, the British Library, the National Library in China, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration to the national libraries of Brazil and South Africa.
Zeutschel on Course for Growth
From an engineering office with two employees, Zeutschel GmbH has developed into a global player with 60+ employees. Says Jörg Vogler, “Our strategy is aimed at long-term, organic growth.”
Sales have quadrupled since the mid-1990s and are now around 12 million euros [approximately 13,080,000 U.S. dollars]. And in the current 2021/22 financial year, Zeutschel can look forward to the highest order intake in the company’s history. “Within the first six months from July to December, orders increased by 50 percent compared to the previous year,” reports Jörg Vogler.
High Innovative Power
The dynamic business development is the result of continuous product innovations. The company developed its first book scanner and, with the 12002 model, the best-selling A2 book scanner on the market.
The latest product highlights are the OS Q and HQ scanner series, which are designed for digitizing historical documents up to A0 format. With the scanners, the image quality of digital images is raised to an unprecedented level.
Compared to its Zeutschel predecessor, the OS Q achieves twice the image quality. And the new top model even goes one step further: thanks to a camera developed in-house, the OS HQ achieves the highest resolution on the market to date – even in A0+ format .
Heidelberg University Library is the first user worldwide to use the OS HQ for digitizing large-format templates.
Zeutschel Scanners for All Media Sizes and Scan Needs
In addition to high-performance scanners for large formats, Zeutschel has a strong market position in all-round scanning systems for A2 and A3+ formats.
The Zeutschel OS 12002 has become the best-selling A2 book scanner in the world and is employed in libraries, archives, private institutions and other record-keeping entities across the world. The zeta scanning system is placed in the open stacks of libraries as a self-service scanner and has also provided worldwide success. There, library staff and students can make digital copies of books, magazines and other bound documents up to A3 size. In addition, the zeta serves as an office copier in medical practices, law firms, banks and insurance companies.
In addition to hardware, Zeutschel also supplies custom developed software solutions for a simple and efficient scanning process. They make working with the devices easier, support quality assurance and control the entire digitization workflow. “For many of our customers, our software applications are an important argument for using Zeutschel scanners,” explains Jörg Vogler.
Sustainability is a Part of the Corporate DNA
For Zeutschel, sustainable management is not just lip service, it is lived every day. The entire product development and production takes place in accordance with the legal requirements for environmental and health protection at the Tübingen site. “It is important to us that most of the device components come from suppliers in the region,” adds Jörg Vogler.
Zeutschel has also been working climate-neutral since 2021 and has been certified according to DIN ISO 14001, the standard for the introduction of an environmental management system.
For Zeutschel, however, sustainability also means strong social commitment. The company pays fair wages, offers secure jobs and has been offering apprenticeships for young people since 2004. Zeutschel is currently training more young people than ever before: two industrial clerks and three mechatronics technicians.
Demo to See the Zeutschel Difference
For more than 20 years, The Crowley Company has been the only North American distributor to carry the full line of Zeutschel scanner. This allows Crowley to meet individual customer needs with the most complete range of high-quality book and overhead scanners available to the market. Give Crowley a call at (240) 215–0224 to schedule a virtual or on-site demonstration and to discuss your collection digitization needs.