A flurry of new installations of the Fuji Xerox 2800 press is changing the market dynamics of the high-speed inkjet sector as the imaging giant takes the fight up to market leaders Canon and Ricoh.
A new installation to Sydney-based SOS Print + Media follows the three that went into the company's own Fuji Xerox Document Management Solutions (formerly Salmat BPO) after Fujifilm’s purchase of the Salmat essential mail business late last year. Three more FX2800 presses have gone to Kalamazoo in New Zealand.
The battle lines in the rapidly developing sector are drawn as Canon, still smarting after losing its Salmat BPO constituency, reinforces its position with sales of its flagship ColorStream 3700 to ZipForm in Perth and Lane Print & Post in Adelaide. The other local high-speed inkjet player, Screen, has also sold at least one of its Truepress Jet 520 machines into Queensland and two of the machines to PrintStop in Wellington, along with a Trupress JetSX B2 inkjet press to Benefitz in New Zealand.
Prior to the recent installation of the FX2800 machines into Fuji Xerox Document Management Solutions and SOS Print + Media, the company had already made firm inroads into the local high-speed digital inkjet market, selling Australia’s first and only Impika iPrint75 to SEMA in late 2011. Since then, however, Xerox has acquired the French manufacturer, allowing Fuji Xerox to fold the Impika product line into its own high-speed inkjet portfolio.
Following Xerox's acquisition of Impika in February this year, Simon Lane, Fuji Xerox Australia’s chief marketing officer, said: “we have always focused on providing solutions that work for our customers’ applications, and we have been fortunate to have in our portfolio best of breed platforms from Fuji Xerox and Xerox Corporation.
“We have also enjoyed a great relationship with Impika over the past few years, so having the Impika technology under the Xerox umbrella complements our parent company Fujifilm’s global leadership in inkjet head and ink manufacture, further reinforcing our ability to deliver end-to-end printing solutions for our customers,” he said
While SOS Print + Media's decision to take on the FX2800 represents yet another timely boost to Fuji Xerox's local high-speed inkjet installation footprint, it also sees the Sydney-based print house set to ramp up its digital print capabilities and opening up new business opportunities with the company signing up for a new Fuji Xerox 2800 high-speed inkjet press for its Sydney-based operation.
The new Fuji Xerox 2800 Inkjet Press will be installed at the company’s Alexandria, NSW, headquarters at the end of August, and will be fully operational early in September, augmenting the company’s existing footprint of both offset and digital equipment.
The deal for the FX2800 comes less than a month after SOS Print + Media purchased two HP Indigo presses – formerly operated by Geon prior to the group’s collapse – one of which went to its Sydney site and the other to its Brisbane site.
For Michael Schulz (pictured), SOS Print + Media director, the move to take on the new high-speed digital press will open up new business opportunities for his company.
“The inkjet is expanding our product range. Offset is still very important for us,” said Schulz. “Offset is an offering we have, but in digital there is certainly growth in digital colour, and there’s growth in short run work. Sometimes we can accomplish that with offset, and sometimes with digital.”
“We plan to run a wide range of applications that would include educational, marketing and high-volume variable data products,” he said. “The various quality and productivity requirements were the main reason why we took so long to decide on a colour inkjet solution.
“Variable items are growing in importance. We now do a lot of mixed offset and digital applications, where we print the colour base offset and then overprint variable in black only. But we plan to turn that into full-colour variable, and of course that then also enhances the product for the customer because variable can be anything, anywhere on the sheet,” he said.
According to Schulz, the existing installation footprint of the FX 2800 machine in the local region is testament to the press’s reliable technology, which he thoroughly expects to meet the company’s requirements for high quality and consistence in image reproduction.
“The Fuji Xerox 2800 is a proven production machine with several installations in ANZ already, so we know it works. Its print quality and productivity were very important, and the support of Fuji Xerox was another factor,” he said.
The Fuji Xerox 2800 Inkjet Press, which was first released globally in mid-2011, is a single-engine duplex printer with a full web width of 520mm. The engine is capable of printing on a wide variety of coated and uncoated stocks at speeds up to 200 metres per minute – a factor that Paul Sanelli, Fuji Xerox Australia’s southern region inkjet specialist and business manager, said contributed to SOS Print + Media’s decision to take on the new machine.
“Integral to their own customers’ requirements was the ability to print on a broad range of papers consistently and without compromising image quality, which the FX2800 excelled at,” said Sanelli. “Hearing the leadership at SOS talk about their offset transition to inkjet, and the value associated with it, provides an insight into their business direction, and their sustainable vision, which we are pleased to be associated with.”