Winning strategic cooperation operationalised

Heidelberg Asia starts selling Ricoh digital offering Rollout agreement in Asia begins in Malaysia and Thailand

Heidelberg Asia Pte Ltd (Heidelberg) and Ricoh Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (Ricoh) announced that Malaysia and Thailand have been chosen as the first markets in Asia in the phased global rollout of the new Heidelberg and Ricoh strategic cooperation. The partnership enables Heidelberg to sell Ricoh’s latest colour digital press, the Ricoh Pro C901 graphic arts edition, as part of Heidelberg’s total print solution. In Asia, Heidelberg will also sell the Ricoh monochrome production printing product portfolio.

Addressing the market need of integrated print production! Digital printing continues to grow as commercial printers extend their business models to offer marketing services, short run colour, and same-day service. Offset printers are increasingly seeking to complete their portfolios with a flexible digital solution integrated into their existing high quality offset environment. The Ricoh and Heidelberg partnership supports them in growing their core offset business and enable them to offer more flexibility towards their clients using Ricoh’s latest digital print technology. Today, offset printers have access to a nearly unlimited range of printing substrates, spot colours and state-of-the-art coating applications as well as specialty inks through Heidelberg’s market leading offerings. By adding Ricoh’s leading digital production printing technology, professional printers will be able to offer the well-known advantages of variable data printing, instant delivery of urgent print jobs and cost effective production of shorter run lengths. The combination of offset and digital printing now available from Heidelberg enables print shops to respond flexibly to customer requirements by offering profitable variable data printing and shorter runs in addition to cost-efficient, high-quality offset printing.

The Ricoh Pro C901 graphic arts edition addresses the needs of commercial printers to build a high quality, digital color printing environment. Featuring a production speed of 90 pages per minute (ppm) it is easily the fastest and most productive system in the digital value segment. In addition to the Ricoh Pro C901 graphic arts edition, the Ricoh Pro 1107EX and Ricoh Pro 1357EX will extend the portfolio to include digital monochrome solutions.

By combining Heidelberg’s Prinect workflow with the dual platforms of offset, for example with the Speedmaster 52 Anicolor press, and digital printing, with the Ricoh Pro C901 graphic arts edition, print service providers will be able to derive greater profitability from short run jobs and simplify colour and job management.

Heidelberg’s and Ricoh’s future plans are to include integration with Heidelberg’s industry standard workflow solution in the graphic arts industry, Prinect, as well as joint development activities for future printing applications. For the global rollout, Heidelberg follows a sequential approach in order to guarantee the highest available service level to its customer base. Starting in April 2011, customers in Germany and the UK are already able to purchase the Ricoh Pro C901 graphic arts edition from Heidelberg. Both companies are working on the rollout for other Asian markets, North America, China and Latin America. The Eastern European market is targeted to rollout by drupa 2012, closing the worldwide process.