Success in International Competition Helps Boost Overseas Sales,
Paves Way to Increased Presence in EU Market

Tokyo -- Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has won a major contract to provide the Swedish postal services with advanced mail-sorting equipment that will promote increased efficiency and reliability in mail delivery. Under the contract, Toshiba will deliver eight units of its Series TT-1000 systems, each integrating a high performance optical character reader (OCR) and video coding system (VCS). The mail-sorting systems scan mail and recognize handwritten or printed addresses, print appropriate barcodes onto envelopes, and then use the information in the barcodes to sort mail into stackers on the bases of its destination. Each unit can handle up to 36,000 items of mail an hour.

The contract for the mail-sorting systems was signed in Sweden in July, and has a value of approximately 100 million Swedish kronor (about US$12 million). Toshiba will start to deliver the systems to appointed destinations in Sweden in June 2004.

Toshiba's ability to develop and integrate the latest advances in LSIs, computer hardware and control software into advanced automated systems supports the company in developing and delivering fast, reliable and accurate mail-sorting systems. A particular feature of the TT-1000 series is a concern for user friendliness, including delivery of mail into a two-story stacker with a height and length expressly designed to meet the customer's requirements. The two-story design makes it much easier for operators to access and receive sorted mail than the four- to eight-story stackers found on other mail-sorting systems. The new systems for Sweden will be the first two-story systems supplied to postal services agency in the world.

In seeking advances in mail-sorting systems, Toshiba draws on experience gained in over 35 years of supplying the Japanese post office and postal services overseas. The company now considers the international market as the most promising avenue for expansion in its mail system business, and aims to achieve annual international sale of 34 million U.S. dollars by FY2005. Toshiba, working through subsidiaries in Europe, will seek to increase its market presence and share in the EU countries, where postal services agencies are focused on increasing efficiency and lowering operating costs.

Features of Toshiba TT-1000 Mail-Sorting System