For print service providers, the days of having to pick productivity over accuracy, speed over quality, or outsourcing over in-house are in the past. The imminent launch in South Africa of the Xerox iGen 5 press is going to revolutionise the market in high-quality, high-margin brochures, posters, photo books, and more. According to InfoTrends, the high-end digital production colour market will expand from around 60 billion pages today to 87 billion pages globally by 2018, offering a significant growth opportunity for print service providers.
Jenny Attewell, Printing Systems & Wide Format Product Manager at Bytes Document Solutions, notes, The new Xerox iGen 5 is expected to deliver productivity gains of up to 25%, since less time is spent on reprinting, quality control, and job setup. "We launched a digital colour revolution when we introduced the iGen platform in 2002," says Andrew Copley, president, of Global Graphic Communications Operations, Xerox Technology. We continue to anticipate change and respond with new ways to convert pages from offset. The iGen 5 is fully customizable to meet page volume, application type and colour needs all while delivering market-leading press uptime. Attewell explains that the iGen 5 press offers a gamut-extending fifth colour, which will dramatically increase user's ability to produce the kind of jobs that customers are looking for today.
The fifth colour option enables the iGen 5 to match a wider variety of corporate brand colours, extending the value of digital print to previously offset-only jobs. By choosing one of three colours – orange, green or blue – in addition to the standard CMYK, it is much easier for printers to accurately hit distinctive brand colours, without moving short runs to offset. Attewell adds that the iGen 5 is fully customisable to meet page volume, application type, and colour needs, all while delivering market-leading press uptime. In addition, it is built on a single, configurable platform, allowing users to choose the speed point and a number of colour stations that best fit their shop’s requirements. A variety of colour matching, job setup, and quality control automation tools help to ensure maximum uptime, which equates to more profitable pages flowing through an operation. Moreover, by automating everything from colour management to system profiling to real-time streak detection, it allows users to get the quality they need, without the errors that typically come with rushed jobs.
The Xerox iGen 5 offers a digital print solution that is truly flexible, and means that you can always be prepared to respond to shifting customer needs in the most economical way possible, concludes Attewell. Print providers can select the iGen 5 150 Press (150 ppm) or the iGen 5 120 Press (120 ppm) and with a new scalable architecture, upgrading from one speed to the next is simple. Other features of the Xerox iGen 5 include: An EFI Fiery or Xerox FreeFlow Print Server to automate and integrate the workflow process from order to finish. Gloss or matte dry ink options that add to the presses ability to create unique and eye-grabbing applications. 26-inch sheet size to enable more jobs and applications such as six-panel brochures, gatefold pamphlets, pocket folders, and direct-mail campaigns. 2400 x 2400 dpi imaging system, Object Oriented Halftoning, Xerox Confident Colour, and Auto Density Control to deliver reliable and predictable image quality. A range of inline finishing solutions, including Xerox IntegratedPLUS Finishing and Dual Mode Sheet Feeder to manage jobs with diverse finishing requirements.
The iGen 5 complements the existing offerings within the iGen family by continuing to expand the scope of applications that can be produced using Xeroxs industry-leading production colour portfolio. About Bytes Document SolutionsBytes Document Solutions, a division of the Bytes Technology Group, is Africas leading document management technology and solutions company, offering a comprehensive range of products and services through two independent business units: Xerox and NOR Paper. A wholly-owned division of JSE-listed Altron, Bytes Document Solutions is the authorised Xerox distributor in 26 sub-Saharan countries, and has an annual turnover of more than R2 billion. In 2014, the company celebrated two important milestones: Xeroxs 50th year in South Africa, as well as the invention of xerography, the basis of the most widely used document-copying machines, which was developed by Xerox 75 years ago. www.xerox.co.za