Stralfors UK is seeing significant interest from both transactional and marketing customers since its recent investment in Océ ColorStream® 3500 technology from Canon.
According to Stralfors, the technology enables it to offer customers a more cost effective 'white paper' solution which, combined with the high print quality, also makes it suitable for a wide range of applications.
The UK arm of the wider Stralfors Group is the latest to benefit from full colour, high-speed inkjet ColorStream technology investment which has already been successfully installed at its plants in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Poland.
This forms part of a strategy to help both its existing and new customers generate more cost-effective, personalised and targeted communications for the printing of transactional, transpromotional and direct mail materials – allowing dynamic content variation and personalisation.
The ColorStream went live at Stralfors' facility in Redruth, Cornwall, in January and according to UK Managing Director, Tony Plummer, interest from new customers is already strong.
"As well as helping customers to reduce pre-printed stock wastage, vary the content and design of printed materials and utilise empty space for items such as advertising or marketing content, customers are already asking us to print targeted promotional or marketing inserts in-line to accompany items such as invoices," said Plummer.
"New demand from existing customers, coupled with being able to attract new customers with the improved quality, cost reductions and data handling capabilities we now have, will help us to achieve significant business growth going forward," he added.
The ColorStream 3500 prints at 75 metres per minute with a maximum print width of 540 mm. Its DigiDot multi-level dot modulation produces crisp details and smooth halftones with a perceived quality of 1200 dpi at full rated speed.
"Being able to merge many files together and amalgamate such large volumes of raw data means we can streamline production customers. For smaller customers, who ordinarily don't have the file sizes to achieve 'Mailsort' postage discounts, we can now combine several print jobs and make this a viable option," added Plummer.
Stralfors UK had a long-standing relationship with Océ prior to the acquisition by Canon so when it looked to move to an inkjet platform, there was naturally only one
place to look.
"The fact that the ColorStream 3500 uses the PRISMA workflow system – which we are very experienced with, having used the same platform for our mono machines – was of great benefit to us as this made the transition to the new kit very straightforward," said Plummer.
"Our overall aim is to deliver the right message, to the right person, in the right way and at the right price and the Canon solution allows us to meet that objective and
win new business by doing so."
Craig Nethercott, Commercial Print Group Director, Canon UK, said: "This investment for Stralfors UK is part of a wider move towards a 'customer communication management solution', whereby it can offer more than just print and mail services. It is great to see a customer using the capabilities of inkjet technology to push the boundaries of its business.
"The words 'cost-effective' and 'improved quality' are rarely used in the same sentence, however, it just goes to show that by using powerful technology to truly
address the needs of print buyers, advantages really can be achieved for all parties."
