SMT-Goupil SA chose Copenhagen as the venue for the announcement of the new Goupil G6 line of systems intended for the international market, while managing director Claude Perdrillat stated that despite financial problems Goupil intends to be one of the five major European information technology groups left in 1993, along with Bull, ICL, Olivetti and Siemens. Goupil French slang for fox – took a substantial step towards its objective of dominating its home market with the acquisition of Normerel SA at the beginning of the year; Normerel is now its OEM arm. The MS-DOS Windows 3-based line will consist of four machines, one built around the Intel 80286 chip, one using the 80486, with two 80386-based computers at the heart of the range. The casing, which is designed to be put on the desk either flat or vertically, has room for up to four 3.5 disk drives, which Goupil claims is completely silent, with a connection for an external 5.25 drive. Total storage on hard disk will reach 1Gb. Before tax, the range will start at $4,380 rising to $19,000. Goupil clearly expects a lot from the machines and is looking to sell 10,000 – including 1,000 of the 80486s models – in 1990, with the new range making up 30% of its total turnover by 1991. Perdrillat stated that Goupil’s objective is to turn over more than $500m a year by 1993, up from the present figure of $200m forecast for this year. Within this plan, the group is reckoning on revenues for next year of $300m, with net profits of over $7m compared to net of $5m for 1989. Nonetheless, the group is still heavily dependent on its borrowing and has large short term debts – Perdrillat puts these down to a customer base of which 30% is in the public sector – presumably the government is never in any hurry to pay up for goods it has received. The result, he complained is that we are still working for the banks too much. The G6 line will ship from the beginning of the school year in September – common practice in France.
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