Cartamundi

'Cartamundi' is a Belgian company that designs and produces all kinds of playing cards. They have a wide range going from ordinary poker cards to popular designer games like 'Jungle Speed', 'Magic: The Gathering' and many others.

What is now the world's leading playing card production company once started very small, with a single printing factory:

'Cartamundi' originated at some time in the 1970s as a joint venture between Brepols, Van Genechten and Biermans that were founded in the 18th and 19th century and produced the very first top quality Belgian playing cards in Turnhout.

In 40 years 'Cartamundi' grew to become the biggest and most wanted playing card producing company in the world, leading them to establish sales offices in France (1993), the US (1994), the UK (1996), Hungary, Budapest, the Netherlands, Sweden (1999), Spain, Signapore (2002 - providing for the complete Asian market), Austria (2005), Chile (2008) and Italy (2010).

Apart from establishing sales offices 'Cartamundi' felt the need to expand their production activities too. They started by opening a brand new factory in the US (1996) to provide for the needs of their new market at the time, but soon many prodcution facilities followed. They bought the 'Altenburg playing card factory' in Germany (2002) and opened new production sites in Mexico and Poland (2008).

Somewhere along the way 'Cartamundi' got more and more involved in the process of designing and distributing games. In order to acquire a greater market share they acquired several companies (parts or as a whole) becoming the 'Cartamundi Group', which later proved to be a very succesful move. In the last 10-15 years they bought 50% of 'AG Müller' Switzerland (1999), 'ASS' Germany (2000), 'Dertor' Poland and 50% of 'Copag' Brasil (2005), 'Yaquinto' US (2006) and 50% of 'Parksons Games & Sports Pvt. Ltd' in India (2010).

Sow for all things playing cards, standard or custom, nowadays all the big companies like 'Asmodée', 'Wizards of the Coast' and many other favourites of ours worldwide go to 'Cartamundi'.