The
high-tech new hub takes Worldwide's investment in print technology, equipment
and facilities to $4.5m this year, and will says the company dramatically improve digital
production and personalisation efficiencies for the 4,000 local business
customers of Worldwide's 21 Qld retail Centres.
According to
Worldwide Queensland's business community is leading the country in the takeup
of this new wave of effective personalised marketing and sales products, which
is why Worldwide has chosen Murarrie in Brisbane as the place to open its
newest, biggest, state-of-the-art, digital-only print centre. Councillor for
Hamilton, David McLachlan, will be the guest speaker at an opening celebration
on 18 October.
Mark Manderson,
CEO of Worldwide Online Printing says, "Our centres and customers in Queensland have
really embraced the advantages of digital. The new hub is the largest facility
of its type in Queensland, and one of the biggest digital-only centres in the ready-to-print
market in Australia."
Digital printing
has exploded from a tiny portion of the print market in the 1990s to nearly 20
per cent of all instant-print products, as it has a fast turnaround and is more
cost-effective for low volumes. It's caused a revolution in commercial printing
so that today a large range of high-quality colour products unthinkable a
decade ago are available even to smaller businesses.
Also fuelling
the digital revolution is the option of variable data printing (VDP), which is
the ability to customise every page of a print run to its intended recipient. Manager
of the Murarrie centre, Peter Mingham, says, "We're very excited about the new
hub's capabilities. Digital lets our clients target their customers
individually. Personalisation is the future of marketing – some studies show it
can double or even triple response rates."
Personalisation
through VDP has become a major selling point for digital printing. The new
Worldwide centre uses XMPie uDirect software, which lets designers using Adobe
InDesign CS2 or CS3 to personalise every sheet of a print run. XmPie
doesn't just add customer names to documents – it uses client database
characteristics to customise images, messages and formatting for each
recipient.
Attendees at the
hub opening will receive their own pack of printed examples, completely
personalised with their own details, using VDP.
Running advanced
Xerox and Océ digital machines 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, Worldwide's new
centre can produce over 32,000 black-and-white and 7,000 colour sheets per
hour: a potential 30 million sheets per year.
Among the new
print equipment going into the hub is the Xerox Nuvera 144 monochrome printer. According to Worldwide the new green EA toner
is more environmentally friendly, and the machine prints on both gloss and
coated stocks at high speeds. The Xerox Nuvera 144 can also handle oversized A3
stock, allowing a full bleed, a rarity in large-format digital. For colour, the
centre runs two Xerox machines, the 6060 and the 2060Plus.
New finishing
equipment at the centre can wire-bind 600 books per hour and provides a large
capacity for folding, drilling, saddle-stitching and laminating. Star finishing
devices at the hub include a Delta Digital Celloglaze (Komfi) and a Renz Mobi
500 Automatic Wire.
Mingham says, "Both
of these machines are fast, reliable and top-of-the-range. The Delta Digital
Celloglaze can do both offset and digital products, and the Renz Mobi is not as
labour-intensive as other wire-binding equipment. That means it's more
economical for us and we can offer lower prices to our customers."
To celebrate the
Queensland hub opening, Worldwide is producing 1,000 free personalised copies
of its new business guide, 27 Steps to
Unlock the Power of Digital Printing, available from www.worldwide.com.au/guides.
Normally priced at $19.95, the guide gives practical examples of how digital
printing and personalisation tools can turbo-charge promotional material such
as mailers, manuals and catalogues – and help businesses cash in on the
customisation boom.
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