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The production of strange particles is studied in terms of a statistical formalism requiring strangeness to be exactly conserved while baryon number is treated grand canonically using a chemical potential. The gas is considered to be in thermal and chemical equilibrium and to have zero overall strangeness. All particles and resonances having masses up to approximately 2 GeV and strangeness up to plus or minus 3 are included. General formulas for different particle multiplicities in terms of infinite series of modified Bessel functions are derived. In contrast to the integral representation of particle numbers in the canonical ensemble, results can be easily handled numerically since the series converge very rapidly. As an illustration, the above formalism is applied to the description of particle production in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. In particular the K/pi ratio shows a strong dependence on the interaction volume on the system while, in contrast, the antiLambda/Lambda ratio is almost independent of the volume. These results are in qualitative agreement with experimental data.