We recently heard news of a sales and distribution agreement between Océ and manroland.   This is a very significant agreement for both companies. The agreement is for manroland to sell the full range of continuous feed color inkjet products from Océ. The cynics amongst us may say why is this important since manroland has been in the digital print business before without any real success with agreements for selling Xeikon based presses and with the Dicoweb D.I. Web offset press.

It is important because of the changes in the market, and the type of products that are being handled. manroland is the market leading supplier of web offset presses for the commercial printing market, and co-leader of the market for newspaper web offset presses. It is these markets that are seen as key markets for continuous-feed color inkjet presses. For Océ manroland is a key partner as Océ's main experience is not in these markets but in the transactional print markets. So this agreement opens up a new channel to market. This however is not just a sales and distribution agreement, but also a co-development agreement between the two companies. Océ has what is perceived by many as the leading workflow for the transactional and direct mail markets with it's Prisma workflow, but this is not really seen as a key workflow for graphic arts applications. manroland will now be working with Océ to define how Prisma should be extended in areas such as color management to be the same as for web offset presses and to provide full graphic arts functionality.

Océ does have a good presence in one area of graphic arts – on-demand short run book printing with it's monochrome cut sheet and continuous feed electro photographic presses, but at this time Océ has had limited success in sales of its JetStream and ColorStream inkjet presses outside of the transactional and direct mail markets. manroland's market reach into it's large user base should accelerate sales of these presses into graphic arts areas. For manroland this will be a major move to extend it's offerings and it will differentiate it from it's competitors like Goss and KBA, who at this time have no digital printing strategies.