SATO Appoints New Country Manager To Reinforce Presence in Italy

Brussels, 07 April 2005 – SATO, a leader in barcode printing since introducing the first thermal transfer barcode printer, has announced the appointment of Mr. Sebastiano Stella as the new Country Manager for Italy.

Mr. Stella, a native of Italy, started his sales career with Benetton, later moving on to transport and logistics with TNT Express Worldwide. In 1996, he joined the Automatic Identification industry, working for Datalogic as Sales and Marketing Export Manager. Since 2001 he has been working as a consultant to different companies in the Auto-ID business.
Sebastiano Stella's previous experience in the Data Collection Systems and Labelling will be invaluable towards the implementation of SATO's strategy in the Italian market. “I believe SATO has great potential in Italy, and with its experience in the vertical markets and in RFID, I will have a strong leverage for exploiting the Italian market. As Italy represents an important market for food traceability with many small regional producers, this opens up a lot of opportunities for a food industry specialist like SATO.” states Mr. Stella.
Reporting to Christian Raux, Sales Manager Europe, Mr. Stella will be based in SATO's offices in Mirano-Venice, Italy.

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About SATO

SATO is a pioneer in the Automatic Identification and Data Collection (AIDC) industry, and
the inventor of the world’s first electronic thermal transfer barcode printer. It revolutionised the barcoding industry by introducing the Data Collection System (DCS) and Labelling concept –
a total barcode and labelling solutions approach providing high quality barcode and RFID printers, scanners/hand held terminals, label design software and consumables. SATO is a public listed company in Japan and has worldwide offices in United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, France, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China. SATO reported revenues of US$528 million in 2003. SATO stock is traded on first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange. More information can be found at www.satoworldwide.com.