Venlo, the Netherlands, April 6, 2001 - Oce, a company at the forefront of digital publishing, has signed a contract with an international publisher to provide the world's first short-run on-line production site for newspapers that look and feel the same as those printed on traditional litho machines. This also means newspapers will be available at the same time internationally as they are in their domestic markets. At the moment the international distribution of newspapers in small numbers is a loss leader for publishers. But now the first company to benefit from Oce's ground-breaking technology is Swiss national newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung (NZZ), which is currently printed in Frankfurt and then brought to London via lorry involving a journey lasting between nine and 10 hours. Vital early-morning readership is lost, with newspapers usually delivered mid-morning at the earliest. With the new system of printing the newspaper-remotely at a west London printing site-the time from publisher to reader has been cut from 16 to just three hours. The copies of NZZ leave that printing site by 1am and are available for people to read first thing at breakfast time. The six-figure sum agreement has been made between NZZ, Oce and Stroma, part of the Creative Print Group in Wembley, west London, which will print copies of the newspaper locally. The machine that will be used is the Oce DemandStream 8090 digital press that can print more than 400 copies per hour of the 48-page newspaper. From the beginning of May, NZZ will be printed daily in London. The subscription price of the newspaper will stay the same. Paul Krisson, business development manager for Oce's printing and publishing division, said: "The revolutionary production process will allow the newspaper industry to capitalise on international markets in a way it has never been able to do before. The publisher will retain ownership of the data, although a key benefit will also include using existing local distribution channels for the newspapers."