Polestar is the pommy equivalent of PMP, although much bigger, producing 42 million magazines every week, with a raft of plants printing heatset and gravure in both Britain and Europe. The new Jetstream is the central part of a A$10m investment in a digital printing facility, and will initially be used for direct mail and transpromo work.
The installation of the Jestream at a web printer is seen by some as a portent for the future. There were at least a dozen of high speed inkjet printers shown at drupa, most of which will be commercially available by Ipex next May, and all of which will be targeting high volume work currently printed by litho. With no prepress or plates, no waste and the ability to print variable data on every page the new printers have plenty to offer, although most will need to up the quality levels seen at drupa to get near litho.
The Océ Jetstream 2200 installed at Polestar was launched at drupa, and was one of only two high volume inkjet web colour printers actually available. It will print high quality colour at 200 metres a minute, which equates to 162,000 colour A4 pages an hour.
Polestar has been using digital technology for some time, the new Jetstream will replace a colour cut sheet system currently producing work onto preprinted stocks. Polestar is also upgrading its trio of Océ VarioStream 9210 printers.
