My first comment is this article is purely my own opinion and at the time of writing I have no definite information to confirm whether I am correct or not. My assessment leading to the writing of this article is based on my understanding of the market, the technologies in use, and the suppliers in the market. The conclusions are all my own and could well be totally wrong.

A major item of news that came out in the week of July 25 was that Fuji Xerox were launching their first high-speed continuous feed inkjet press, the 2800 Inkjet Color Continuous Feed Printing System. This press is a high-speed, 200 meters/min duplex color printing system. It is also the fastest single engine duplex printing system available in the market. Other presses with this level of performance, such as the Océ JetStream 3000 use two linked engines to print duplex at this speed.

I mention the Océ JetStream 3000 press that was announced at the recent Océ Production Printing Summit because I feel there are many close similarities between this press and the new Fuji Xerox 2800 press. First of all I believe they use the same print heads, these being the latest 40 kHz  Kyocera KJ4 heads that run at 200 meters/min at 600 x 600 dpi when configured with twin imaging channels. The second reason I see close similarities between the two presses is I believe that the Fuji Xerox 2800 is a variation of the the new Océ JetStream 1400 press that was introduced at the same time as the Océ JetStream 3000. This Océ JetStream 1400 press is a single engine duplex press running at 100 meters/min at 600 x 600 dpi. This press also uses the 40 kHz Kyocera KJ4 print heads but only with a single imaging channel, thus running at half the speed of a press with twin channel heads. The Océ JetStream 1400 and the FujiXerox 2800 also have a great similarity in their looks and the internals of the new presses look very similar.

The Océ JetStream presses are built in Japan by Miyakoshi. Miyakoshi has been the most innovative of all offset press vendors in successfully developing digital presses. It first showed a high-speed continuous feed inkjet press at drupa 2004. The problem for Miyakoshi was that as a small Japanese offset supplier it had no major distribution channel outside of Japan and little expertise in the world of transactional printing. At the same time Océ, the market leader in continuous feed monochrome presses was finding itself losing out to its major rival Infoprint Solutions as the transactional world started switching to color printing, and they saw Infoprint as really the only act in town with a viable color press. This brought Océ to Miyakoshi and the result was the JetStream 2200 press launched at drupa in 2008. Since then Océ has become the market leader in continuous feed color with its JetStream press range.

In October 2010, shortly after Océ had become a Canon owned company, it launched its own inkjet press, the ColorStream 3500, that used the same Kyocera KJ4 30 kHz print heads as used in most of the JetStream range. At the same time Canon took the marketing of the new ColorStream 3500 press in Japan. Up to this time Miyakoshi had sold its version of the JetStream presses into the Japanese market where Océ did not operate.

This brings us to the current situation with the new FujiXerox 2800 press, and this is where my conjecture comes into place. Océ wants to differentiate the market with a range of presses. For the entry level customers it has the 75 meter/min JetStream 1000, a single engine duplex press. It then has a faster version of this press using the new 40 kHz print heads, and this is the JetStream 1400 at 100 meters/min. Also for its entry level customers it has the 75 meter/min ColorStream 3500 and this can be configured with twin engines for duplex printing. For higher volume customers it has the twin engine 150 meter/min JetStream 2200 and the faster 200 meter/min JetStream 3000 that uses the faster twin channel Kyocera print head. Many analysts are also projecting that there will at some stage be a faster version of the ColorStream 3500 using the new faster 40 kHz Kyocera print head. There is obviously no place in the Océ press line up for a 200 meter/min version of the single engine (JetStream 1000/1400) press.

This puts Kyocera in a problem in that it has put the higher speed Kyocera print head into this single engine duplex JetStream press chassis but has no channel to market for it. It also finds Canon is going to compete against it in Japan with the new Océ ColorStream 3500 press. It then finds that FujiXerox also has a serious problem and this is that its high-speed continuous feed color toner press, the 490/980 is not selling against the competitors' high-speed inkjet presses and FujiXerox needs a new higher speed press for its markets. We therefore find two Japanese companies with problems and an easy solution to clear the problems with a press that is ready immediately for the market.

If I am correct in my supposition this could be a really significant move by these two Japanese companies. FujiXerox has really strong distribution in the Far East and Australia/New Zealand markets and also has a very close tie up worldwide with Xerox. Xerox is likely later this year to launch its new waterless inkjet press in the USA and probably Europe as a twin engine 150 meter/min duplex press. Having a single engine duplex press would significantly enhance the Xerox position in the market and give them a serious weapon to attack the market leading position of Océ in the continuous feed market.

There is however a chance I am totally wrong and that it is pure coincidence that the FujiXerox engineers have build a press that has an identical specification to a Miyakoshi press, and also looks just like a Miyakoshi press. In that case forget everything written in this article.