Framos and Smartek, a Croatian electronics company, have been working together since January 2011. The relevant contracts were signed in December 2010 at the Electronica Trade Fair in Munich.

Smartek has already been active in the industrial image processing market for several years and first launched its business with the development and production of flash controllers. These controllers enable up to 6 lighting units to be actuated extremely precisely with brief, strong pulses of electricity. This technique enables LED lamps to achieve greater brightness and a longer life than is the case for continuous operation. In applications where a camera has to record fast moving objects (for example in packaging production) - high-quality, low-cost image processing systems can be created. Flash controllers, for example, are used by one German manufacturer of top-of-the-range cars for the quality control of bonding processes.

Since 2010 Smartek has offered a targeted range of industrial cameras with Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) interface. Thanks to the use of image sensors from Sony, Kodak and Aptina, the range of functions and performance parameters make these cameras are ideally suited for diverse industrial image processing systems. For example, German beverage manufacturers use SMARTEK cameras to monitor the geometry and colour conformity of printed symbols on bottles and tins.

Dr. Ronald Müller, responsible for the Framos product portfolio said: "We are delighted to have Smartek on board as an innovative and future-proof partner for our portfolio." Dr. Andreas Franz, Managing Director of the Framos Group, adds: "Thanks to our partnership with Smartek, we are continuing our tradition of offering European customers from the image sensor industry a marketing platform, and making use of our global storage and logistic services."

The Managing Director of Smartek, Dubravko Srsan, has this to say about the joint venture: "We are very pleased to have gained Framos as a strong partner for marketing our products which, as a family-run company, suits us very well. We can now focus on our core areas of expertise, and significantly expand our product range."