Salmat upgrades its high-speed digital printing presses

Salmat’s services cover a wide range of activities, though it is probably best known for its massive output of transactional printing and mailing, known in the industry as essential mail.

Comprising the production and dissemination of statements, cheques, accounts and similar items, essential mail is outsourced to Salmat and similar companies by Australia’s major banks, government agencies, telcos and utility companies.
Postal authorities estimate that nearly 26% of the essential correspondence that lands in the average mailbox emanates from Salmat. Each year it processes 580 million mail packs through Australia and overseas.

Major digital user

To handle this output, the company has become one of Australia’s major users of digital printing equipment with printing centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. It maintains 18 offices around the country, and internationally it has operations in New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Some months ago, identifying a need for an upgrade in speed and output, Salmat undertook a review of its continuous printing requirements in partnership with Océ. At the time the company ran three lines of Océ Pagestream 880 Twin Presses in Sydney, three in Melbourne and one in Brisbane, each capable of producing 880 A4 images per minute.

Taking into account the strong surge in Salmat business and new customers coming on line, Océ recommended expanding to an Océ VarioStream 7650 Twin Press solution with MICR-capability, increasing output from 880 images to 1,200 images per minute and boosting resolution from 300dpi to 600dpi.

Overcoming localised problems

According to Salmat Director of Group Operations, Iain Cleveland, an important outcome of the Salmat review was the requirement that any streamlining of systems would need to ensure the company as a whole could rise above localised problems in one area. It would need to take into account peaks and troughs in each area as well as unforeseen issues such as power outages, fire or flooding.
“Companies like Salmat enter strict service level agreements with their customers, with little margin for error. This requires us to look very carefully at the systems we put in place, including our printing systems,” he said.
Transactional print jobs

Typically a large transactional print job is transferred mainframe-to-mainframe from the client to Salmat, supplying variable information such as names, addresses and amounts, which fit standard, pre-designed forms.

Pre-printed paper rolls with blanks for this information are run through the Salmat presses the same day. By evening the forms are printed, cut, enveloped and mailed. Virtually all transactional jobs are completed on a “same day” basis.

Océ recommended that two Océ VarioStream 7650 Twin Presses be installed, with an Océ Prisma workflow management system linking all Salmat’s continuous feed printing presses.

The Océ Prisma software provided the key to Salmat’s production concerns, enabling the company to switch jobs, virtually mid-stream, so that any press could take over a job from another, regardless of location. In this way the company could utilise its additional resources if a job fell behind schedule or encountered problems in a particular area.

The two new systems were both installed in Sydney, replacing two of the Océ Pagestream 880 systems, which have been transferred to Melbourne and Brisbane to increase interstate capacity. Cleveland says Salmat introduced the two new machines sequentially, bringing the first one online while keeping all work on the existing Océ Pagestream 880s.

“We began by duplicating jobs that were already running so that staff became familiar with the machines. When we were confident teething problems had been overcome, we brought the first machine on line and turned off one of the Pagestream 880 systems.
“We then repeated the process for the second machine. The entire installation of both Océ VarioStream 7650 Twin Presses, including training, took less than a month.”

New technology

Divisonal Director of Salmat, David Besson, says that for customer communication companies like Salmat, keeping abreast of new technology is essential.
“The company is structured around a number of groups, each of which has a group technology officer. His or her job is to constantly look for new hardware and software systems. They virtually live in the future.

“We also demand close strategic ties with our suppliers and, in this regard, we enjoy a very strong relationship with Océ. We have a regular monthly meeting with Océ account managers. As well, Salmat is a member of Océ’s LEO Group (Leadership-Organisation), comprising its largest customers worldwide. Once a year members of the LEO Group are invited to meet with Océ to explore new technology and to discuss emerging trends.
“We also visit Océ OpenHouse each year too, which adds to the strength of the relationship,” Besson says.