SEMA picks Impika as core of $10m high-speed inkjet project

Fuji Xerox will supply Australia’s first French-built iPrint 75 inkjet engine to SEMA, the third largest business process outsourcing company.

The shock announcement ends months of speculation as to which way the company would jump when upgrading its technology in utility printing. Both Océ and Ricoh InfoPrint, along with Screen were known to be in the tender process.

The Impika option maintains SEMA’s long–term relationship with Fuji Xerox as its main technology supplier. Fuji Xerox is releasing its own high-speed inkjet engine, FX2800, at IGAS this year.

According to CEO, Keith Hunter, the company spent around $10 million in a combination of business colour and data processing platforms, and two new iPrint 75 inkjet printers from Impika’s Marseille factory.

“We needed to ensure our capability matched our client’s expectations, and we believe our new investments means we can deliver flexible, relevant communications for our customers more quickly than ever before.

“The scalable self-cleaning Impika presses feature space for additional print heads to increase resolution, and the quality of the output is better than what we have seen from other suppliers,” he says.

SEMA is buying two twin-engine duplex platforms to ensure disaster recovery. The first will be installed in Sydney by December with Melbourne two months later. Hunter (pictured) believes that installation into separate branches increases throughput and secures the company’s production capability, if one printer were to ever fail.

With its multimillion-dollar investment, SEMA aims to challenge the marketing space with its collateral turnover speed and offer clients the opportunity to change how they use essential communications across both print and on-line channels. “In today’s world, our customers are moving from concept to creative and execution in hours and days, not weeks and months.

“This technology means we can quickly create highly personalised print communications, which link customers directly to on-line and mobile fulfilment sites,” says Hunter. “Our results from customers tell us that response rates on these types of multi-channel communications are superior to either print-only or e-only direct campaigns.”

The French Impika technology gives SEMA the capability of one-to-one marketing, and the ability to combine direct marketing messages within account statements. The shift in production will see a significant reduction in wastage from brand, message or legal changes as the iPrint controller manages variable data.

Changing marketing messages on the fly

The new high-speed colour print platforms eliminate the need for pre-printed shells. Each iPrint 75 is capable of printing up to 32 million sides of A4 paper per month. “Now, we can dynamically change the content before it’s printed and ensure a client’s brand and messaging are always current and consistent.

“With one-to-one marketing we can make every single message different form the next, not just the text but layout and design as well. It’s all about offering our customers access to that capability, so that they can grow their business. Their imagination will be their only limitation,” he explains.

By taking advantage of this technology, marketers can respond quickly to changes in their customer’s behaviour. No longer locked in with shell stock, the new systems have the capability to bring tailored campaigns to smaller groups with quick output changes.

“With the lowest retail sales figures we have seen in a long time, if ever we needed to move quickly within the marketing space it is now. We believe this investment will set us up so that your customers can grow their businesses, because we can deliver marketing campaigns at speed they can respond to market changes more quickly.

“Providing dynamic, relevant, personalised communication to customers in a timely manner is certainly the way of the future, and we want to make sure we’re in the best possible position to help our customers do that,” he says.

Traditional marketing is still the best method of getting campaigns into the hands of new customers, but to be effective a multi-channel approach is needed to cover all the bases. On the direct marketing side the benefits of paper over email are significant, as there are a number of spam filters that filter out advertising material.

Goodbye to the shell game

Though the multi-million dollar investment will loosen SEMA’s dependence on shell stock production, that side of the business will not fade quietly into the background. Once piece of its cut-sheet technology was only purchased a year ago, and the standing manufacturing plan is to have both systems working alongside one another with some degree of substitution.

Hunter says over time SEMA may find that this continuous colour technology is the only platform needed. But there is a question of scale, as large platforms do not necessarily lend themselves well to small volumes.

“When used in the right scale the Impika’s can be cost equivalent, if the volumes are significant enough. The other side is the reduction of the cost to the customer in the supply chain,” he says.

This move to high-speed colour inkjet follows its competitors already in that space, Salmat went for Australia’s first pair of Océ Jetream 2200 MIRC machines and Computershare installed South East Asia’s first two InfoPrint 5000 inkjet presses. Just this week OnDemand joined the game with the announcement it will add an Océ ColorStream 3500.