Fuji Xerox is celebrating Christmas early, with the arrival of Australia’s first iGen4 and the announcement that its printers have just passed the 2.5 billion colour prints marker in Australia.
The company claims that both itself in number of printers sold and its customers in numbers of sheets printed are achieving consistent growth of 40 per cent year on year. Simon Lane, business manager strategic accounts at Fuji Xerox says, “We are seeing 40 per cent year on year growth in colour print volumes produced on Fuji Xerox printers over the past four years, and the same 40 per cent year on year growth in both our high end iGens and entry level colour printers.” (ed: everything from the 6075 down)
Lane says that between April 2004 and April 2006 the number of colour prints produced by Fuji Xerox customers in Australia rose from half a million to a million, with the growth rate escalating dramatically over the next two years, tripling in fact, to reach 2.5 billion by August this year.
There are now more than 1200 entry level Fuji Xerox printers and more than 500 mid and high range systems in Australia. Lane says, “In addition our entire product range has been renewed or refreshed over the past 18 months, providing Australian printers with the widest range of most modern print systems on the market.”
The iGen4, shown at drupa, is the successor to the iGen3, the company’s first high end colour printer. It boasts more than 400 enhancements. Henryk Kraszewski, colour production marketing manager at Fuji Xerox says, “The high quality output from iGen is now even easier to attain on the iGen4.”
The enhancements can be broken down into three main areas: an auto density control solution on the engine, which eliminates any possibility of streaking; a new carrier dispensing system which delivers uniformity of colour and means developer never needs changing; and an inline spectrophotometer, which automatically creates colour samples on target sheets, registers them for accuracy and processes the data, all at the top rated speed of the iGen4.
Fuji Xerox is also highlighting half a dozen new print solutions it is inviting printers to view, including the new 700, which it says will appeal directly to offset printers; the 5000AP which prints on a wide range of media with no change in productivity, the 1257GA proofer which has a 2400dpi resolution and upgrades to the 4112/4127 monochrome printers. Finishing solutions, both inline and offline, are now a major part of the Fuji Xerox proposition.
The company has also introduced new software developments, Lane says, “We believe the launch of Express to Print within Freeflow for instance will become very popular, as it dramatically simplifies the print preparation path.” Express to Print auto converts applications such as Adobe CS programmes or MS Word into PDF, then auto imposes and auto sizes onto a preselected template.
