Last year, Xerox Corp paid Savin Corp $28m and Du Pont Co paid it $9m for rights to a new liquid toner copying technology also licensed to Ricoh Co. Now Xerox and Du Pont are getting together with a joint venture company, DX Imaging, to exploit the technology by developing and manufacturing equipment using the Electroink liquid toner copying technique. The partners have already invested $80m in the venture, which will initially employ 200 people and will be based west of Philadelphia, and plan to pump another $40m into it this year. First products will be for colour proofing and colour printing. Liquid toner technology was superseded by dry toners in the late 1970s because they seemed to promise better definition – but the machines have reliability problems, and it is thought that the new technology may prove faster and cheaper.
