Inkjet & Digital Printing
Worlds first Océ ColorStream 10050 installed in Germany
Friday 25. September 2009 - Drescher Full-Service Versand GmbH puts 5-color continuous feed printing system into operation
Océ, an international leader in digital document management and delivery, today announced the installation of the worlds first Océ ColorStream 10050 in Germany. The location may seem to be deep provincial backwater, but when it comes to applying the latest technology for the production of mailings, the town of Offenburg, home of Drescher Full-Service Versand GmbH, is on the leading edge. Drescher, one of Europes largest document management and mail services providers, is the first company in the world to install the new 5-color continuous feed printing system.
An investment in the near future
Every year Drescher Full-Service Versand GmbH produces around 240 million printed pages on continuous feed print engines. Color printing is becoming increasingly important, since color elements in mailings, invoices and reminders make it easier for readers to understand the document and permit the sender to specifically highlight important information. “In one customers information letters, for example, weve printed the phone extension of the responsible contact person in color,” says Hans Schulz, CEO of Drescher GmbH. “This immediately resulted in a reduction of work load in the customers telephone switchboard by 70 percent because their clients now directly notice the number of the person responsible before they even see the number of the switchboard.”
It is not this purpose alone that requires a system that produces up to 168 pages per minute in full. For Hans Schulz, the Océ ColorStream 10050 is more of an investment in the immediate future – but one that makes economic sense even today. “We can print five colors with the Océ ColorStream 10050, but we dont have to” he says. The reason is that in monochrome operation the Océ ColorStream 10050 is just as economic as a pure black & white printing system, and even with two or three colors applied, the costs are still below those of full-color operation. “Besides print quality and speed, it was this flexibility that was the main reason for investing in this 5-color system,” he adds, “and of course the fact that weve cooperated successfully with Océ for over twenty years also played a role.”
In addition to its cutsheet printers, Drescher currently operates a total of eight Océ continuous feed printers. These include an Océ VarioStream 9230, up to now used for color printing and now complemented by the Océ ColorStream 10050. “3-color printing no longer allows us to meet all of our customers requests,” Schulz explains, “and so, instead of extending the system with a fourth color we decided to go for the Océ ColorStream 10050 immediately, because this system allows us to make use of an additional spot color outside the CMYK color space.”
Ideal for TransPromo applications
Accordingly, the Océ ColorStream 10050 covers a broad spectrum at Drescher, currently processing applications from one- and two-color transaction printing and daily postal documents, over traditional color mailings up to the printing in color of training documents for a large retail chain. Hans Schulz, however, sees the greatest potential in the area of TransPromo applications. Here, Drescher Full-Service GmbH has developed and tested pilot projects together with Burda Direct, a subsidiary of Hubert Burda Media and one of the leading companies in the area of CRM activities and cross-media dialog marketing. “The results were very promising, with response rates on the TransPromo mailings being some 20 percent higher than those on normal letters.”
Joint project work
Peter Wolff, Vice President Graphic Arts, Océ Production Printing, is very pleased about the fact that the first Océ ColorStream 10050 worldwide was installed in Germany. “This shows the significance of the German market for Océ and for the development of digital printing in Europe. Drescher Full-Service Versand GmbH is an important partner in this arena with the relevant workflow and application know-how at their disposal. Above all, however, they are an important and well appreciated customer of ours. The feedback from the experts in Offenburg and from the Drescher sales force as well as the knowledge gained from the joint project work help us to continuously tailor our systems to the needs of the market.”
The Océ ColorStream 10000
The Océ ColorStream 10000 Series is a continuous feed printing system that can be operated using up to five colors. These can be the four CMYK colors and an additional spot color, or else up to three spot colors and black. The system produces up to 168 A4 pages per minute in full color, with the speed increasing up to 800 DIN A4 pages per minute in monochrome operation. Due to the systems ability to automatically recognize black & white and full-color pages and optimize the printing speed to match, the user gets attractive pricing models with different prices for color and black & white pages. This permits a cost-effective processing of very diverse print jobs on only one system.
The Océ GraphicArts dot modulation integrated into the Océ ColorStream 10000 generates brilliant print output in all applications. The Océ FlexiDark technology permits coloring to be fully user-controlled. With even coverage, the optical density can be adjusted to fit the needs of each application.