Venlo, The Netherlands, – Océ, an international leader in digital document management and delivery, today announced that the Océ ColorStream 3500 inkjet printing system has been installed for the first time at a customer site. The happy customer is service provider Corus in Fontenay-sous-Bois, close to the French capital Paris.

Clients in all business segments
Corus is a service provider specializing in designing and printing transactional documents. The vast majority of Corus' print output is bank statements, insurance statements, pay slips, invoices, subscription and payment notices from around 400 companies across all business sectors. Corus prints 20,000 jobs a month − small, medium-sized and large.

Corus uses only Océ printing systems (for black & white and color applications) at its two production plants in Fontenay-sous-Bois and Pringy near Annecy. By investing in the Océ ColorStream 3500 printing system, Corus has reinforced its strategic commitment to the high-volume digital production of customized color documents.

Reinforced 4-color printing
The Océ ColorStream 3500 system was unveiled at Canon Expo in Tokyo in November 2010, and the first system installed was at Corus in late January 2011, at the same time as its European launch.

The Océ ColorStream 3500 throughput of 75 meters per minute (60,600 A4 per hour) has reinforced Corus' capacities of 4-color printing to which the company began to migrate in 2004. It first installed Océ cutsheet printers and then in early 2009 introduced a number of Océ VarioStream 9240 continuous-feed printing systems into its printrooms. The number of print pages in color has thus increased to 50 million pages out of a total of 300 million (black & white and color).

Océ inkjet technology
At the end of 2010, Corus decided to invest in the Océ inkjet technology and acquired the Océ ColorStream 3500 printing system. The company aims at printing 80% of its Fontenay-sous-Bois color output by October 2011 on the Océ ColorStream 3500. Corus chose the Océ ColorStream 3500 for many different reasons: its per-page printing cost which is "very competitive in the market," the investment cost and a print quality which is "very close to offset," as Corus Managing Director Hervé Jourdan said. Furthermore, Océ was able to connect the new Océ ColorStream 3500 to a single-fold finishing unit already installed at Corus. This was extremely important for Corus, whose strategy is to be able to handle any type of job for any type of customer.

Impact on entire mail process
Four-color inkjet technology has had an impact on the entire mail processing chain. It opens a new chapter for Corus, allowing customized color documents to be printed directly from the blank paper roll (without using preprinted forms) and at a high rate. Thus Jourdan expects a rise of direct mail jobs from current 2–3% of Corus' total output as the Océ ColorStream 3500 is ideally suited to print marketing documents. Before, these had to be printed on an offset press and inserted at the folding stage. Printing of transactional and marketing documents can now be combined in one production stream.

There are many benefits in grouping production streams like this, especially for Corus customers, as Jourdan explains: "Using the Océ ColorStream 3500 to print our customers' applications means we can combine print runs, group production streams and hence reduce the average postage cost that Corus passes on to its customers. With this new set-up, Corus can also reduce the high number of production batches... Everyone's a winner, I think."

Future perspective
Jourdan is planning to install a second Océ ColorStream 3500 at its second printing site at Pringy. Corus is committed to giving its customers a secure service with full backup at both its production sites. Corus will also use the Océ ColorStream 3500 for alternate simplex and duplex printing. The Océ ColorStream 3500 has this necessary flexibility because of its twin configuration with two print engines.

Sebastian Landesberger, Executive Vice President, Océ Production Printing, said: "The Océ ColorStream 3500 is the latest addition to the Océ high-volume inkjet family addressing a wide range of applications like transaction or TransPromo and it offers a smooth migration to color. That's why we are sure that this is the right printing system for Corus with their needs for flexibility in both black & white or color, in simplex or duplex printing."