High Tech Company To Create New Jobs In Ontario County

Victor – State Senator Michael F. Nozzolio announced that Kirtas Technologies Inc., a growing high technology company that designs and sells book-digitizing machines and services, plans to invest $1 million in new equipment at its facility in the Ontario County Town of Victor. The project is expected to create 142 new jobs and retain 18 existing jobs over the next three years.

"As one of the fastest growing towns in New York, Victor continues to be an upstate success story,” said Senator Nozzolio. “This major announcement by Kirtas Technologies is another example that the State's efforts to attract high-tech jobs to the Finger Lakes region are working. Governor Pataki's leadership was instrumental in ensuring that Kirtas Technologies keeps growing in our local economy and I thank him for his continued commitment to Ontario County and the region."

Kirtas Technologies is a leader in delivering digitization system solutions to the publishing-on-demand, library and search engine marketplaces. The company's high-speed and automatic book scanning systems eliminate the need for disbinding and destroying the very documents being preserved, thus enabling rapid and large-scale digitization of even the most fragile books. Furthermore, through an unprecedented integration of custom hardware and software, Kirtas products sets a new quality standard for book digitization; a quality level that is far superior to existing book scanners and that can endure the test of time.

Kirtas has grown steadily since 2001 when Dr. Lotfi Belkhir left Xerox Corporation and secured an exclusive license to the page-turning technology he helped develop while a principal of the Xerox Venture Lab. Earlier this year, Kirtas secured a mass digitization contract with a Fortune 500 company. To meet the demands of this customer, as well as other growing accounts, Kirtas will significantly ramp up its digitizing capacity from 5,000 to 30,000 books per month within the next six months.

In consideration of its commitment to New York State, Kirtas Technologies Inc. is eligible to apply to Empire State Development for a Capital Grant of up to $325,000 to be used toward the purchase of new scanning machines.

Additionally, the company has been approved for a $500,000 equity investment from Empire State Development's Small Business Technology Investment Fund, which provides start-up high-tech companies throughout New York State with a source of venture capital to promote new job creation and economic growth. The fund makes early stage equity investments in companies that have developed innovative technology products or services and display significant competitive advantage.

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