One of the biggest "open secrets" within this industry is that Xerox will be entering the world of high-speed continuous feed color printing. Working with its partner company Fuji Xerox, the company will introduce its new continuous feed color press into North America and Europe sometime within the next nine months. This printer has been shown under a non-disclosure agreement in Switzerland earlier this year at the Hunkeler Innovation Days event. Many analysts in the industry have been pre-briefed on this product and some, including myself, have known of the product for around two years.

This product has now been officially announced for certain of the Fuji Xerox regions and the first installations have been made in Japan and Australia, hence this article now being written and the product is now in the public domain. I would not be surprised to see an announcement for North America for this product at GraphExpo in October, and there can be no doubt it will be a highlight of the Xerox stand at drupa in May next year.

This FX980 product that for the moment is referred to as the Fuji Xerox Color Continuous Feed Printer has been installed at HPA in Melbourne Australia, the first customer in the world. HPA is a transactional service company 51% owned by Kodak. A second system is being installed at the Fuji Xerox epicenter demonstration facility in Sydney.