The device has been held under secrecy in Fuji Xerox Australia’s premises at the Australian Technology Park in Refern Sydney for a number of months now as technicians test the device and undergo rigorous training.
Fuji Xerox says The DocuColor iGen3 offers capabilities that complement traditional offset presses: short print runs, quick job turnarounds and variable information (VI) printing. It features prnting speeds up to 100 pages-per-minute with print quality the company believes rivals offset presses, on a wide range of paper stock.
Abby Abhyankar, Fuji Xerox Production Services Business Group vice president of Sales and Marketing, says, “Clients are demanding their applications such as books, newsletters and point-of-sale/direct-mail materials to be produced in full colour as quickly as possible, without sacrificing quality. The DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press is engineered to meet and often exceed those demands, and allows commercial print professionals to easily accept production jobs that they would normally have to turn down.”
The new digital press targets commercial and data processing print services markets, offering new levels of performance in short-run production as well as in full colour VI and customised printing for billing, transactional and direct marketing applications. As a result of a US$ 1 billion investment in its R&D, the DocuColor iGen3 Digital Production Press is designed to print up to 6000 A4 pages per hour or 100 pages per minute.
Abhyankar says, “The printing industry is now experiencing a transition from traditional mass production to flexible shorter and customized digital production. Buyers of print are demanding order flexibility/frequency and improved economy. We expect existing short-run offset print production to migrate quickly to the iGen3 Digital Production Press thanks to its ease of operation, economics and the automation of pre and post press workflows, which includes electronic collation and inline finishing.”
To support all its customers in maximising their iGen3 investment, Fuji Xerox is also introducing a new customer development role: the Smart Press Production Consultant.
“Our overriding objective is to help our customers develop new businesses and grow their revenue. The iGen3 offers a wealth of opportunities for customers to profit by providing services that add significant value. The Fuji Xerox Smart Press Production Consultant’s role is to help ensure our customers take full advantage of the iGen3’s many benefits and get off to a fast start, in the new production print business,” Abhyankar says.
Unveiled in 2001 at Print 01 held in the United States, the iGen3 launch began in October of the following year in North America and Europe, where the systems have been exceeding print volume expectations and producing offset quality documents for clients mainly in commercial printing and data processing industries.
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