Still don’t take digital printing seriously? A 25-metre-long line of high-tech hardware in the print room of Computershare Communication Services’ Port Melbourne plant should be enough to change the mind of even the staunchest litho stick-in-the-mud.
The multimillion-dollar line, which incorporates three InfoPrint 5000 engines feeding a web of work into a top-shelf array of inline finishing gear, is one of two in the country. Both are owned by a local success story that started out in Melbourne in 1978 and is now a 10,000-staff global corporation offering a diverse range of investor and communication services from offices in 24 countries. Just as digital has become a force in printing, so too has Computershare staked its claim as a serious player in the production market.
The arrival of InfoPrint machines in Australia has been a long time coming. While the vendor did find some success early on, such as the machines installed at US on-demand books giant Lightning Source, it is fair to say that IBM wasn’t always the most exalted manufacturer in the digital arena. But it was pushing the barrow for inkjet when people were still saying ‘digital will never catch on’.
How times have changed. Ricoh bought InfoPrint Solutions in a $725m deal in 2007, progressively taking over IBM’s printing activities until it reached full ownership last year. Five years ago, Ricoh was still trying to shed its ‘photocopier’ image; now it is a major player. Its global joint venture with Heidelberg provides as much printing pedigree as anyone could ask for.
The InfoPrint 5000 was launched in 2007, just a few weeks after news of the IBM-Ricoh deal broke. It took four years to win over an Aussie buyer. One rival vendor who spoke to ProPrint questioned the decision by Computershare Communication Services to purchase two InfoPrint 5000 lines, one each for its Sydney and Melbourne operations. After all, why buy into older technology when the market has recently seen a flurry of cutting-edge inkjet machinery launched by the likes of Océ, HP and Kodak?
“I don’t think it is a stagnant technology,” says Ross Ingleton, sales director of Computershare Communication Services. “What we have seen from the relationship with Ricoh and the InfoPrint product is that they are continuing to invest in it and improve on it.”
He points out that when Computershare started looking at the device, it didn’t have the capability to print MICR, “but we needed a MICR option in Australia so we got one”.
Another selling point was the InfoPrint’s “tight web” design, which enables true dot-to-dot registration, says Peter Milburn, managing director Computershare Communication Services.
He says this quality and consistency is thanks to “the combination of the paper and the registration of each and every drop coming out of the inkjet heads. Some of the devices we looked at didn’t run a tight web; they ran a slack web and dot-to-dot registration can be slightly out.”
If the company was ever unsure if it backed the right horse, two natural disasters put any doubts to rest.
The first was not so much the choice to go with InfoPrint but the decision to opt for stock from Australian Paper to feed it. Availability of suitable inkjet grades has been one of the biggest bugbears for all the early adopters who have taken the high-volume inkjet route.
“We thought it could’ve been an issue, which is why six months before it arrived, we started testing stocks in Boulder [Colorado, InfoPrint’s head office in the US],” says Ingleton. “We sent paper supplies over to work through all the different options to figure out what would give us the better quality options.
“We also wanted to work with Australian Paper. That turned out to be a solid decision when we saw the unfortunate issues in Japan,” he adds.
Many of the web grades used in Australia come from Nippon Paper plants in the areas of Japan decimated by the earthquake and tsunami in March. Plenty of local magazine printers suffered as their supply lines were disrupted. By choosing a local paper maker, this wasn’t a problem for Computershare.
The other disaster was much closer to home. The first InfoPrint 5000 went into Sydney in December. The plan was that the inkjet beast would progressively swallow up an ever-increasing number of jobs from the fleet of cut sheet toner-based machines, which are dotted around the country, including sites in Perth and Brisbane. The Queensland floods ensured that plan was fast-tracked. When the big wet hit in January, it threatened significant jobs being produced at the Brisbane office, where the fleet of B&W Fuji Xerox toner machines overprint onto coloured offset base stock.
“When we had the Brisbane flood, we had to transfer work out of Brisbane. We did that overnight,” says Milburn. Jobs were switched from a toner-offset mix to full inkjet while still hitting the exacting colour standards demanded by clients.
A lot of that is to do with the InfoPrint technology, says Ingleton. “I think there is perception in the market that people have to go through massive redevelopment of their applications to convert across, but they don’t.”
Meeting of minds
In most cases, when a print shop buys a press, it is a case of a technology company selling a product to a print manufacturer. In the case of the InfoPrint and Computershare, it is more like two technology giants doing business. Sure, there’s a difference in scale: Ricoh turns over more than $20bn per year, Computershare’s 2011 revenues were ‘only’ $1.6bn. But they are both major players, each with a strong R&D focus.
This is apparent in the workflow in operation at its sites in Port Melbourne and Ermington, Sydney. The devices themselves are driven by an InfoPrint controller, and Ricoh also sells a workflow product for file handling before the press.
“We didn’t buy that as part of the solution for workflow management to accompany the device. We have our own internal solution,” says Milburn. The firm wasn’t about to dump this sophisticated proprietary software as part of the inkjet shift.
He says the vendor was “gobsmacked” by how Computershare could “pick up our current workflow and direct it onto the device with all of the associated variable information, formatting, and treatment information”.
One peculiarity of this individual approach is that Computershare has stuck with a PDF workflow. “I would think considering InfoPrint’s heritage with IBM, 90% [of workflows] would be AFP.”
The way in which the device integrated seamlessly into Computershare’s systems helped during the floods, but the real plaudits for this disaster recovery plan must go to Computershare itself, says Milburn. Their internal expertise explains how they could swiftly match the full-colour inkjet output to the offset-printed base stocks in storage in Brisbane.
“One of the things we have always had in our infrastructure is graphic design people in-house. The relationship between images, colour output and speed were inherent skills we had in our sites… there is consistency of output and colour before it ever hits the machine.”
Colourful history
This image processing heritage at Computershare dates back to 1989. Back then, Milburn worked for one of its print suppliers, Chelsea Images. Computershare had been “using just about everyone in the market” for its print requirements, but chose Chelsea as a preferred supplier when it took early steps toward becoming an multinational corporation.
“By 1998, Computershare had aspirations to take the model global and they asked us to go on the journey with them. We opened our first facility in Bristol, UK that year. The paint had barely dried on the walls when Computershare were off to the US. In 1998, with a gentlemen’s agreement, we decided the only way we were going to be successful was to sell to Computershare,” adds Milburn.
Along with Milburn and Chelsea Images founder David Hynes (now global chairman of Computershare Communication Services), there are over 20 of the original Chelsea Images staff still at the company, including its first-ever employee, who now works at the Melbourne facility and was on the steering group involved in making the decision to purchase InfoPrints.
Overall, Computershare is the second player in a market led by Salmat. The other force is SEMA, and between the three they ensure a competitive market. The major clients are banks, telcos and government departments: blue-chips with multimillion-dollar spends and multi-year contracts.
Ingleton says: “We don’t consider ourselves as big as Salmat but we don’t always want to compete. There are different competitors in the different channels. There are different competitors on inbound versus outbound BPO, so market share is difficult to gauge. Inbound has been a very big part of Computershare for many years. On the inbound side, we would be the market leader in payment processing. We provide services to four or five different banking partners and we are doing the payment processing in the ‘lockbox receivables’ space,” he adds.
BPO, or business process outsourcing, is the name of the game, and Computershare has a range of complementary services in this area. Share registry management is, of course, its forte, but there are other inter-connected services, with some large customers accessing the full gambit and others cherry picking individual offerings.
When it comes to printed jobs, it is not the high-powered engines that most excite Ingleton but the finishing, which includes high-end Hunkeler and Tecnau inline units to create one-pass reel-to-sheet production.
“From my role, which is selling the solutions to the clients, the finishing gear is a real differential. The colour is fantastic, the InfoPrints are fantastic, but when you combine it with the finishing, our customers enjoy a new level of output.
“Don’t underestimate the perforation. It is a data-driven function in the customer’s file. The data file carries this through the device and turns a perforation on or off anywhere within the spec – not by job lot but by individual piece, so it is extremely flexible,” says Ingleton.
Multi-platform market
Ingleton says: “The market is very multi-channel. It is email, SMS, and some of the brands might only have an electronic strategy.”
The shift to electronic presentment is a thorny issue for every printer, and few products are driving online as quickly as statement work – Computershare’s heartland. Having just ploughed tens of millions into its inkjet infrastructure, isn’t there a risk this work will disappear?
Ingleton says the perception that paper-based bills and statements are on their way out is overcooked.
“Over the years, we have seen that electronic delivery in the market has flat lined at around 20%. That depends on different industry segments. Telcos use a high percentage of electronic, banks are probably 15-20%, governments are in the single digits because email doesn’t offer comfort in terms of privacy and confidentiality. Electronic will only go so far.”
However, that’s not to say print and online have found equilibrium yet, not by a long shot. Ingleton says that even with all of its intel, Computershare’s crystal ball is cloudy. “Peter and I have both been in the business for many years but it is hard to speculate where exactly the market will be in three years.”
While Ingleton says the mix between paper-based mail and its electronic counterpart has found some balance, technology is not static. Email is not going to kill off print, but there are other developments that will have an impact, from the rise of tablets computing to secure communications portals such as Pitney Bowes’ Volly system or US-developed Zumbox platform, which is already being used by New Zealand Post to offer an online alternative to printed mail.
The answer for Computershare is to join them, not beat them. Within Communication Services, there is an array of services to produce output for any platform, print or online. In the US, Computershare has partnered with Zumbox to cater for applications that head in that direction. “It is pretty exciting but they have a long way to go before we see that transition in volume,” says Ingleton.
He backs this up by saying that the InfoPrints are currently at “great capacity” and there are plans to increase this in the future, either with a new machine or a speed increase to the existing lines.
But Ingleton adds that conversations about online versus print and where to invest often miss the real point. It all depends on what the end user prefers. “I think the market likes to go electronic because it saves them cost when they deliver communications to customers, but it is a consumer choice.”
Factfile
Established 1989
Headcount 500
Printing plants NSW, VIC, QLD, WA
Global sites 24
Equipment InfoPrint 5000s, Fuji Xerox B&W cut sheet, iGen4
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