WOBURN, MA, May 21, 2001 – Indigo N.V., a leader in digital color printing systems, has announced that an Indigo UltraStream 2000 Digital Offset Color press has been installed by the central publishing and mail facility of the City of San Francisco. According to Rick Mangold, Vice President of Sales for Indigo America, the installation marks the first time an Indigo press has been acquired by a major U.S. public agency. "We’re obviously very pleased that Indigo was chosen to meet the publishing needs of a large city government," he says. "The decision recognizes the ability of Indigo’s digital printing technology to handle high-volume jobs at high speeds while also providing offset-quality printing that includes extensive variable data capabilities." David German, Manager of Reproduction and Mail Services for the City and County of San Francisco, says the 26-employee facility, which produces documents for all city agencies – including the Mayor’s office, Public Health and Public Works – undertook months of in-depth research before selecting Indigo’s UltraStream 2000. "The feature we liked first and foremost was its ability to print on-demand and store documents," he states. "Second was the quality, which is excellent, and third was the ability to interrupt jobs for proofing or emergency orders. We also liked the UltraStream’s ability to produce collated documents, which is very important for us." "We looked at machines from other manufacturers," German points out, "but their turnaround times were either too slow, or they couldn’t perform both versioning and on-demand printing. Or else they were roll-fed, not sheet-fed, which meant fifteen minutes of downtime to change the roll if a job gets interrupted—and we get interrupted a lot." The fully-equipped publishing facility offers a complete range of services designed to meet the requirements of all City departments in San Francisco, including graphic design, web site design, binding, reproduction and personalized mailing. It also maintains a fast pace of producing single-color letterhead, full-color annual reports and everything in between. Because some jobs are extremely time sensitive, they take priority over others already underway, German explains, and the ability to quickly stop one and start another – along with a growing demand for color documents – were other important factors that led them to Indigo. "Almost all of our color work is digital-based," he says, "and the amount of color printing we were contracting out was basically doubling every year. So given that we’re an online, on-demand printing organization, it seemed natural for us to go after an on-demand color press. Which we did, and which we bought." Now that their new Indigo UltraStream digital color press is in place, in fact, clients will have more design options than ever before, including color inserts that can be placed inside annual reports by an existing black-and-white system. What’s more, German expects to offer color-printing services to other public agencies in the region, boosting the facility’s already successful role as a city-owned profit center. "Because the departments pay us for our services, we need to be competitive with the private sector," he notes. "We try to publish all of our documents digitally – and with the Indigo UltraStream, we not only provide our customers with high-quality digital color printing but also save them time and money, which will improve our own bottom line."