The installation will see Australia Post effectively become a rival to the big three transactional mailing houses, all of whom are currently partners to one extent or another, and all of whom have installed or are installing a pair of similar high speed inkjet webs in their Sydney and Melbourne plants in the past year, Salmat with Océ, Computershare with InfoPrint, and Sema with Impika, although Sema may hold back on its second Impika due to its slimmer post-administration size.
The relationship between Salmat and Aussie Post is even more comlpex; the pair are already both partners through the former’s mailing business, and rivals through the digital post business, which has already seen a court case with both sides claiming victory. Conputershare and Salmat are both rivals in print and partners in the digital post business, meaning Computershare amd Aussie Post are partners and rivals. Further adding to the complexity Australia Post is thought to be one of the front runners in the potential sale of Salmat’s print business.
The Océ ColorStream presses, to be installed in Australia Post’s Melbourne and Sydney print facilities, will be dedicated to the transactional market. They will enable full colour, continuous feed inkjet production at Australia Post for the first time. They will replace previously used offset shell processes, and offer major productivity savings, quality improvements and waste reduction.
Lisa Schutz, general manager of Multi Channel Direct Marketing at Australia Post, says the installation was a major milestone in the organisation’s drive to become the most significant player in the Australian multi channel communications (transaction and promotional) market.
She says, “The Océ ColorStream 3700 is the next generation of full colour, continuous feed inkjet printers, offering key advantages.
“The technology allows a total white-paper-in, full-colour-out process, and provides huge savings in waste reduction and speed and advantages in scalability and flexibility as our needs grow.”
The presses will be installed in July and are matched by the purchase of a new multi-million dollar software system which will drive the transactional printing division. A Pitney Bowes Rival inserting system completes the new Australia Post installation.
The Océ ColorStream 3700, released only in February this year, is the high-speed model in the Océ ColorStream Twin series and offers a process speed of 100 meters per minute with a print and paper width of 540 mm using Océ DigiDot inkjet technology at a perceived print quality of 1200dpi. That translates to 1350 A4 impressions per minute for monthly volumes of up to 43 million A4 pages.
Chris Miller, head of operations and IT eCommunications at Australia Post, says there were many features of the new presses which drove the decision, primarily the very high almost offset look and feel print quality, productivity and speed. Green considerations also played their part.
Miller says, ”One of the key features for us was that, when the operator needs to stop the presses, they stop immediately and can then be started again at exactly the same place without any quality deterioration and while maintaining full data/print integrity. This process eliminates paper run-on, of anywhere from 20 to 200 metres of blank paper, common with competitive equipment. This feature alone reduces waste involving thousands of dollars a year. Additionally time is saved as no wasted, blank pages have to be handled in the later post processing steps.
“Another advantage was the Océ Headsafe feature, which allows us to switch between monochrome and full colour and back again in a matter of minutes. Unused print head nozzles can become clogged, resulting in delays to clean them. With the Océ ColorStream 3700, this is avoided by capping the unused heads – as one might cap a fountain pen for instance – which eliminates the clogging.
“We can also upgrade from the standard four print heads to six print heads if required in the future and can use a variety of inks from dye and pigment to premium, which extends our printing options.”
The Océ ColorStream 3700 is built at Océ’s Poing facility in Germany. Market analyst InfoTrends confirms Océ has held the leading position in the continuous feed market full colour segment since 2009 and now dominates this segment with a 36 per cent percent market share globally of all continuous feed engines sold.
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