BOSTON March 3 2008 - With 126 Xerox Corporation customers worldwide now printing 1 million or more pages per month per machine on their iGen3 Digital Production Presses, Xerox continues to help customers boost their sales in the lucrative digital color printing market, where more pages mean more profit. One customer has even eclipsed 3 million pages in a single month on a single iGen3 press. The average monthly print volume on the Xerox iGen3 press is now 500,000 pages. Building on this success, Xerox is launching new features for the iGen3 press that provide even greater image quality and productivity.

Since its launch in 2002, the Xerox iGen3 press – which runs at 90 or 110 pages per minute – has helped businesses large and small create a wide-variety of applications and generate profitable color pages. Xerox continues to be the leader in color page volume with color pages growing more than 30 percent from 2006 to 2007.

"The iGen3 press is a key factor contributing to the redefinition of the digital production color market. It has been a catalyst for growth in digital color pages, many of which complement offset output in printing environments that rely on both technologies," said Riley McNulty, research manager, Production and Large Format Printing Markets at IDC, a global provider of market intelligence and advisory services. "The iGen3 press continues to receive well-deserved attention for its market-making innovative technology, productivity and image quality."

Valued at $68 billion in 2007, the global digital printing market opportunity for print providers is expected to double by 2012 according to industry consultancy Pira International. There are now more than 2,000 Xerox iGen3 presses installed worldwide, with 275 customers having installed two or more iGen3 presses to meet their increased demand for full-color jobs, such as marketing brochures, photo books, catalogs, personalized direct-mail pieces and invoices and statements that include customized marketing messages. For an increasingly environmentally conscious world, printing on demand has the advantage of creating jobs only in the quantity and at the time needed, reducing waste and inventory space.

Digital success with iGen3 presses

Mercury Print Productions, a commercial print and media solutions provider, operates six iGen3 presses at its facilities in Rochester, N.Y. The company's first two iGen3 presses have produced a total of 120 million pages since they were installed less than five years ago. Three of the company's iGen3 presses are equipped with Lasermax Roll Systems and Xerox FreeFlow Application Series Software for Teacher's Edition textbooks, a book solution that provides a cost-effective way of printing state- and region-specific textbooks. These presses each produce more than 1 million pages per month. A fourth iGen3 press – equipped with Teacher's Edition software and the extended sheet size of 14.33" x 22.5" – runs covers used in case binding and also for the book blocks themselves and produces 400,000 to 600,000 covers per month.

"The iGen3 presses fueled our digital printing success and have been the foundation of our digital color print production," said John Place, chief executive officer, Mercury Print Productions. "We have become an industry leader in the production of digital books for the education market and continue to produce full-color marketing materials, brochures, posters and direct-mail pieces at an incredible rate."

Immediate Mailing Services, Inc., an integrated service bureau, installed its first digital system, an iGen3 110 press with Xerox FreeFlow DocuSP 5.1 Print Controller, in June 2007 and prints 600,000 pages per month. The company uses its press to produce transactional-promotional documents, postcards, newsletters, coupons and mail inserts. IMS creates direct-mail marketing campaigns with multiple touch-points for clients nationwide. IMS is part of Xerox's Graphic Arts Premier Partner Program, a global community of close to 700 leading digital print providers.

"We selected the iGen3 press because of its image quality and speed. Combine that with its ability to print variable data on mixed substrates and you have an amazing combination," said Paul Macor, vice president of sales and marketing, Immediate Mailing Services. "Xerox's knowledge of the industry, the partnership programs it offers, and the technology and sales support the company provides really made it stand above competitive offerings."

Macor said the ability to expand their services and turn jobs around in 24 hours has helped them grow their business, especially with clients whose rates, offers and promotions change rapidly and require fast response times.

New product enhancements

Xerox's award-winning iGen3 press is even more productive with the introduction of a new image quality enhancement and a finishing option that creates professional books and manuals automatically.

International Color Consortium DeviceLink Profiling is an enhancement to Xerox's Automated Color Quality tool for Xerox iGen3 presses. It builds custom RGB and CMYK color profiles real-time during the initial job set-up using an in-line spectrophotometer for faster processing and greater color accuracy. ICC specifications are widely used in the printing industry.

The C.P. Bourg Bleed Crease Module is a new optional accessory for the in-line C.P. Bourg Document Finisher (BDFx) offered on the Xerox iGen3 presses. It produces a professional saddle-stitched booklet with a clean, tight fold and supports the same wide variety of paper stocks as the BDFx, including coated stock and cover sheets. It expands the capability of the BDFx by adding the ability to full-bleed trim and crease printed sheets before they are stapled, folded and face trimmed, which increases productivity and produces higher quality finished documents.

Pricing and availability

International Color Consortium DeviceLink Profiling is available on all iGen3 presses equipped with the Xerox FreeFlow Print Server 6.0.

The C.P. Bourg Bleed Crease Module is immediately available in North America at a U.S. manufacturer's list price of $47,500 including hardware, installation and operator training.

Xerox launched these new features during the annual On Demand Conference and Exposition, a major event for the document imaging industry held here this week.