Nationwide franchising operation Worldwide Online Printing is opening a new $1.5m digital only print centre in Brisbane on Thursday, to meet the demand in the boom state for instant printing. The high-tech new hub takes Worldwide's investment in print technology, equipment and facilities to $4.5m this year, and will says the company dramatically improve digital production and personalisation efficiencies for the 4,000 local business customers of Worldwide's 21 Qld retail Centres.

 

According to Worldwide Queensland's business community is leading the country in the takeup of this new wave of effective personalised marketing and sales products, which is why Worldwide has chosen Murarrie in Brisbane as the place to open its newest, biggest, state-of-the-art, digital-only print centre. Councillor for Hamilton, David McLachlan, will be the guest speaker at an opening celebration on 18 October.

 

Mark Manderson, CEO of Worldwide Online Printing says, "Our centres and customers in Queensland have really embraced the advantages of digital. The new hub is the largest facility of its type in Queensland, and one of the biggest digital-only centres in the ready-to-print market in Australia."

 

Digital printing has exploded from a tiny portion of the print market in the 1990s to nearly 20 per cent of all instant-print products, as it has a fast turnaround and is more cost-effective for low volumes. It's caused a revolution in commercial printing so that today a large range of high-quality colour products unthinkable a decade ago are available even to smaller businesses.

 

Also fuelling the digital revolution is the option of variable data printing (VDP), which is the ability to customise every page of a print run to its intended recipient. Manager of the Murarrie centre, Peter Mingham, says, "We're very excited about the new hub's capabilities. Digital lets our clients target their customers individually. Personalisation is the future of marketing - some studies show it can double or even triple response rates."

 

Personalisation through VDP has become a major selling point for digital printing. The new Worldwide centre uses XMPie uDirect software, which lets designers using Adobe InDesign CS2 or CS3 to personalise every sheet of a print run. XmPie doesn't just add customer names to documents - it uses client database characteristics to customise images, messages and formatting for each recipient.

 

Running advanced Xerox and Océ digital machines 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, Worldwide's new centre can produce over 32,000 black-and-white and 7,000 colour sheets per hour: a potential 30 million sheets per year.

 

Among the new print equipment going into the hub is the Xerox Nuvera 144 monochrome printer. According to Worldwide the new green EA toner is more environmentally friendly, and the machine prints on both gloss and coated stocks at high speeds. The Xerox Nuvera 144 can also handle oversized A3 stock, allowing a full bleed, a rarity in large-format digital. For colour, the centre runs two Xerox machines, the 6060 and the 2060Plus.

 

New finishing equipment at the centre can wire-bind 600 books per hour and provides a large capacity for folding, drilling, saddle-stitching and laminating. Star finishing devices at the hub include a Delta Digital Celloglaze (Komfi) and a Renz Mobi 500 Automatic Wire.

 

Mingham says, "Both of these machines are fast, reliable and top-of-the-range. The Delta Digital Celloglaze can do both offset and digital products, and the Renz Mobi is not as labour-intensive as other wire-binding equipment. That means it's more economical for us and we can offer lower prices to our customers."

 

To celebrate the Queensland hub opening, Worldwide is producing 1,000 free personalised copies of its new business guide, 27 Steps to Unlock the Power of Digital Printing, available from here. Normally priced at $19.95, the guide gives practical examples of how digital printing and personalisation tools can turbo-charge promotional material such as mailers, manuals and catalogues - and help businesses cash in on the customisation boom.

 

Location: http://www.i-grafix.com/news/australia/worldwide-opens-new-digital-only-print-hub-in-qld.html

 

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