High-end digital printers descend on Sydney

More than 270 Fuji Xerox Premium Partners attended the 4th annual regional conference this week with the theme of ‘breaking barriers.’        

Representing the company’s most valued customers in terms of digital printing, the Premium Partners are drawn from 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region. They came to Sydney for two days of intense workshopping, networking and information sharing on the advances in digital technology in graphic communications. And yes, there was time for a harbour cruise.

After the welcome address by Andy Lambert, CEO of Fuji Xerox Australia, Li Cunxin, word renowned ballet dancer, stockbroker and best-selling author centred the first morning with an inspired address. He took the assembled partners through the trials of his life, which are currently the subject of a film in production.

Following on and addressing the mega trends of personalisation, collaboration and digitisation Valerie Blauvelt, vice president of Xerox production marketing group, said the conference was a vote of confidence in the digital printing sector, especially its power to communicate in a personal manner. “It is personalised ads that have made Google into a verb,” she said.

World wide the Premium Partners programme now stands at 663 members with 140 new companies joining this year. Not only concerned with the technology of digital printing the Premium Partners provides a forum for knowledge sharing and cooperation.

In Sydney participants in the workshops were able to focus on such functions as loyalty programme marketing, unified offset and digital workflows and how to recruit, train and retain a digital work force. Although drawn from very different countries, the same challenges are apparent as the digital printing sector increases its share of printed pages.

A highlight of the conference was when Neil Brener, Salmat, the local advisory board representative, (pictured right with Nick Kugenthiran, general manager Fuji Xerix Australia) hosted a site visit for the international visitors to the Salmat (formerly HPA) site in Matraville. This is where the third high-speed DocuColor 980 in the world is being installed under the watchful eye of Fuji Xerox technical guru, Roger Morgan. It follows the world’s first installation at the company’s Melbourne premises earlier this year. Salmat is the regions largest business process and facilitations company.

According to Neil Brener the visitors to Matraville saw perhaps the most advanced and diverse array of digital printing machines in the world. Not far from the new 980 is a Kodak Versamark as well as a comprehensive line-up of colour and mono cut-sheet printers. Other site visits were to Blue Star and SEMA to showcase the latest advances in security mail and one-on-one marketing.

With the advent of the 980 the theme of transpromo (using essential mail as a promotional opportunity) figured largely during the Premium Partners conference. Well-known industry identity, Patrick Bernau, ran a workshop on the financial services applications of the high-speed technology with a focus on one-to-one communication strategies.

Loyalty programmes are proving to be one of the main sectors where the personalisation power of digital printing is coming into its own. A panel led by marketing guru Malcolm Auld of MAD Marketing included the visiting director of PODi. Warnings of the pitfalls that await the unwary who venture unprepared in CRM schemes were augmented by case studies of successful personalised printing initiatives.

Reiner Eschbach provided another highlight of the conference. Project leader of the imaging and services technology centre Xerox, he gave a dynamic presentation on the latest advances in security printing – RFID, DucuSP and PIN mailer. Involved at a seminal level in the technology behind the upcoming advances in digital print quality, Eschbach (pictued here flanked by Roger Morgan and Andy Lambert, managing director, Fuji Xerox Australia) represented a valuable and appreciated information source on future trends for the Premium Partners.

There was a strong contingent of New Zealand Premium Partners that crossed the Tasman for the event led by advisory board member, Warren Leslie, executive chairman of Wickliffe. Chinese printers were the second largest group in Sydney after the local Australian industry, an indication of the rapid take-up of Fuji Xerox technology in that burgeoning market.

At the conclusion Neil Brener declared the Sydney conference not only the largest but also the most successful of the Premium Partners gatherings so far. The location of next year’s is a closely guarded secret.