Venlo, The Netherlands – Océ, an international leader in digital document management and delivery, today announced that the cost-effectiveness of Lithotech Afric Mail's new Océ JetStream solution incentivizes the company's existing customers to add job-appropriate variable color to their documents.

South Africa's leading provider opts for Océ

Lithotech Afric Mail in South Africa is a leading provider of customer communication solutions. The company helps its customers communicate effectively through the use of paper-based and electronic media as well as other related products and capabilities. Lithotech's customer base includes blue chip companies across all industries including retail sector, financial institutions, mobile phone companies and government departments.

Utilizing the Océ JetStream 1000, Lithotech's customers in the transactional field can now add variable graphics, promotions and branding specific to each type of transactional document, this being widely known as TransPromo in the industry.

Fits customer's profile and buying trends

"This product is not to be compared to the traditional preprint and black laser on costs, as the benefits lie in the variable color and dynamic forms that can now be custom-designed to fit each customer's profile and buying trends," notes Hennie Mentz, Group Managing Director at Lithotech Afric Mail. "Savings can also be achieved by consolidating mailings without the layout restrictions of litho preprint, and achieving a larger postal rebate from the Post Office."

"With its unique combination of integrated 6/6 color capability and  the industry's smallest inkjet footprint, the Océ JetStream 1000 is well-suited to all forms of high-volume digital color printing for transaction documents, TransPromo, direct mail, books and manuals – to name but a few," says Sebastian Landesberger, Executive Vice President, Océ Production Printing. "Bringing new levels of productivity and versatility into the customer's value chain, the Océ JetStream 1000 will fit perfectly into Lithotech's requirements for modern and economic color printing."
Inkjet and Océ, the right choice

Until the release of the Océ JetStream 1000 series Lithotech Afric Mail had been unable to find a suitable system for their needs. Given that high-speed digital inkjet printing systems had already been available on the market for a number of years, Lithotech Afric Mail could carefully evaluate the inkjet technology on offer.

After visiting a number of Océ JetStream customer sites in Europe during 2010 and evaluating their workflow, and after detailed discussions with customer site management, Lithotech Afric Mail was convinced that the Océ JetStream technology was the right choice for its plant in Cape Town.

Increasing efficiency and full-color capability

Speed, print quality, service and overall TCO were the major deciding factors for Lithotech and, as a result, the printer chosen was the Océ JetStream 1000 – a significant investment for the Bidvest Paperplus Company, Lithotech Afric Mail's parent.

The system has fast inkjet printing heads operating at 75 meters per minute and is more than capable of producing over 20 million pages each month, more than quadrupling Lithotech Afric Mail's current full-color capacity.

Running 600 dpi full-color variable at 1,010 A4 images per minute, this is a remarkable shift away from the traditional high-speed variable monochrome web-based digital printers that have served the transactional and print-on-demand markets in South Africa to date.
Seamless integration into existing environment

The Océ JetStream 1000, powered by the Océ SRA MP (Scalable Raster Architecture, Massively Parallel) controller, integrates seamlessly into Lithotech's current AFP/IPDS transactional and print-on-demand workflow – allowing Lithotech to move existing color and monochrome print work to the Océ JetStream without any changes using Océ PRISMAproduction workflow. Océ DigiDot technology enables the ink drop sizes to be varied from 7 to 12 pico liters, allowing a large range of paper types of varied qualities to be utilized on the Océ JetStream 1000.

The print unit itself is housed in a self-contained single tower system which utilizes the floor space more efficiently than competitive devices, with a footprint that is 20 to 60 per cent smaller than other inkjet systems in its class.