Rapid Digital turns on a show business extravaganza

At the glitziest new press launch the industry has seen, Sydney's Rapid
Digital (formerly Rapid Reprographics) along with Fuji Xerox entertained 600 guests to a night of all-out industry celebration at its new Artarmon production facility. The crowd was treated to stretch limos,
red carpet, dancers, music and fine victuals in a night that will set a hospitality benchmark for many years to come. Rapid Digital’s proprietor Ron Anderson and his team spared no expense or effort in ensuring the night was a success and that the iGen3 era in Australia was inaugurated with suitable style.


Among the many attractions three Italian tenors in gold sequin jackets, belted out numbers from
The Marriage of Figaro and Il Travatore.

Not downplaying the night's entertainment, the event represented a seachange in the orientation of printing in the region. Theatrically revealed from behind a red curtain on the night, the second
IGen3 in Australia was already installed and ready to start printing. It is one of six to be installed around he country in coming months.

Rapid's all-digital printery now ranks as one of the world's largest with two iGen 3s, two 2060s, two Nuvera 120s, five DocuTechs, a Duplo 4000, a Morgana creaser and a Polar 78 guillotine. A calculation by a member of the audience put Rapid’s duty cycle printing capacity at somewhere over 12 million copies a month.

Anderson's's belief in the iGen3 as a colour digital pathfinder was endorsed by Fuji-Xerox managing director
Phil Chambers.

"The iGen is a high-perfomance digital press. It runs at 100 pages a minute irrespective of paper thickness and is ideally suited to Rapid Digital's work, which can include variable data," he said.

To cap off a perfect evening, Ron Anderson presented Fuji-Xerox's David
Cascarino with an order for two Nuvera Pro production printers, due for
release in early 2005. And there's plenty of floorspace for more kit...

Check out www.rapidrepro.com.au where video clips of the launch will be uploaded shortly.