A Melbourne mailing house, which has virtually doubled in size overnight and projects even further expansion at a similarly rapid rate, has selected Océ as its technology partner to handle a huge increase in printing workload. It has installed an Océ VarioPrint 5160 digital production system – one of the first in Australia. The company, DataSend Australia, formerly known as National Direct Response, was recently rebadged by the new owners to reflect its expanded aims and aspirations. Managing director Phillip Gray says that the new owners had brought a number of contracts into the business, which required the revamping of activities to provide the full range of direct and essential mail services.
"With the growth came the requirement to rapidly expand our printing operation. We needed a capability of 40 million pages a year, a task well beyond the printing equipment we had inherited with the business," Gray says.
"In selecting a replacement though we realised we had to go beyond simply putting in a printer. It was important to us that our supplier saw itself as participating in an ongoing relationship with us. In other words, to be our partner.
"Oc’s response to this convinced us that we had found a partner able to facilitate our expansion by providing cutting edge technology to reflect the kind of operation we and our customers demand."
Within days of its installation the Océ VP5160 had a tough baptism of fire. It began printing a mailing job of 760,000 items for a national retail chain utilising variable data streams that provided names, addresses, bar codes and alternative retail messages.
Running the printer over several days and working continuously for two shifts at a time, the job was completed virtually without incident, despite the relative inexperience of the printing staff with their new equipment.
Gray says other features that attracted DataSend included the equipment’s robustness and reliability as well as its ability to handle a wide range of stocks, including plastic cards, and paper sizes.
