From 2011 manroland and Océ will be the first on the market to offer total digital printing solutions aimed at the graphic arts industry – all of these being solutions that will include consulting, systems, services and materials provided by a single source. The companies will supply solutions that cover all of the manufacturing steps within the graphic arts industry by combining print data management and digital and offset printing as well as post processing.
Steve Dunwell, managing director of manroland Australasia flagged his company’s digital intentions without naming names at its Customer Club dinner in Melbourne last week, and says, “It is an exciting development, and one that will bring new opportunities for our customers. There will be integrated solutions, and benefits to newspaper, heatset, packaging and commercial printers. Both companies are leaders in their fields with expertise in offset and digital.”
According to the two companies print businesses can select optimum future-oriented technology and workflow solutions after being jointly advised by manroland and Océ. According to manroland both companies complement each other ideally and so are able to obtain competitive advantages from this cooperation.
Through the deal manroland will make its entry into digital printing and build up its own digital printing competence step-by-step. Océ will receive access to new customer segments and will therefore have the opportunity to considerably extend its market share in the graphic arts industry.
The new agreement between manroland and Océ marks the first global deal for a major offset manufacturer with a digital developer, and signals an acknowledgement that digital is now a serious part of the print landscape, and will increasingly be so.
Gerd Finkbeiner, CEO of manroland says, “Digital printing already has a market share that cannot be underestimated. This cooperation opens up a very promising growth market for us, one that is positioned very close to the core capabilities of manroland. This area of digital printing is a business that increasingly supplements industrial printing.”
Océ is the world’s market leading provider of digital continuous feed colour solutions with decades of experience in the fields of system integration, workflow management and variable high-performance data printing.
Océ was one of the first companies to launch high speed colour inkjet, with its first Australian systems just going into Salmat’s Melbourne and Sydney plants. In both heatset and coldest web offset manroland is market leader, and is a major sheetfed press manufacturer. Océ was bought by Canon earlier this year.
Rokus van Iperen, chairman of the Corporate Executive Board of Océ, says, “This strategic alliance with manroland offers us the ideal opportunity to firmly establish Océ inkjet technology in the graphic arts industry. This is a big step, especially for our Continuous Feed Printing Division located in Poing/Munich.”
Océ’s high speed inkjet manufacturing plant near Munich is less than two hour’s drive from manroland’s main web manufacturing centre in Augsburg.
The deal sees manroland out of the digital blocks first among the major offset press manufacturers, Heidelberg has a tie up with Konica Minolta in this country that may develop into a global deal, its CEO Bernhard Schreier stated at Ipex that the company was hoping for a global partner by the end of this year, while KBA also said at Ipex it is looking at offering a digital solution before too long.
