Chicago - R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, announced today that it has developed the industry's first 60" wide high speed ink jet digital press. New 60" presses, expected to be deployed in the first half of 2011, will enhance the company's fleet of proprietary ProteusJet digital printing units. A combination of width and speed make these new presses faster and wider than any commercially available alternatives.

RR Donnelley's global platform features a broad array of proprietary and commercially available technologies. Its digital press platform will include nearly twenty ProteusJet presses by year end and the company expects to deploy an average of one new ProteusJet press per month through early 2012. One recently expanded production facility alone will utilize five ProteusJet presses to produce trade and educational books. The company has integrated one- and multiple-color digital printing presses with delivery systems that enable digitally printed content to be finished in-line into books, direct mail pieces, catalogs, marketing communications, magazines and other products.

"No other provider offers the flexibility afforded by our leading digital printing resources," said Thomas J. Quinlan III, RR Donnelley's Chief Executive Officer. "This expansion to our ProteusJet fleet represents the next leap forward in digital book production, with significantly enhanced productivity as these new presses can produce two-up images. Put in-line with automated book binders, these RR Donnelley innovations will continue to allow publishers to reinvent the supply chain for trade and other books."

The presses were designed and built at RR Donnelley's recently expanded Research & Development operation, which has been instrumental in a series of digital printing breakthroughs. As do the company's other ProteusJet presses, this new unit will run at 1200 dpi resolution at 800 feet per minute in one color mode.

Ed Lane, President of RR Donnelley's Book & Directory offering, commented, "We are helping to change the dynamics of on-demand and variable communications. ProteusJet is already at work in a variety of book, TransPromo statement and direct mail applications. This new offering -- the widest and fastest ink jet printing press anywhere - will further enable publishers to reduce expensive inventories, revitalize back lists and respond even faster to quickly changing consumer demand."