Epson South Africa held a ceremonial ribbon cutting for its new Innovation Centre and Johannesburg Office on 10 April, demonstrating the company’s commitment to its customers and partners across the region. The company will host regular workshops, seminars, training sessions and industry events at the centre.
The venue will also showcase the latest printing, visual display, manufacturing, scanning and lifestyle solutions for key target sectors including retail, healthcare, logistics and hospitality, which are experiencing key growth.
It will also serve as a platform to provide direct feedback to the company’s product designers and engineers in Japan, helping to shape the next generation of tailored technological solutions that address the unique needs of the region.
‘This facility is a great environment for the team to operate and collaborate,’ said Timothy Thomas, country manager, Epson Southern Africa.
The Epson Innovation Centre will leverage Johannesburg’s strategic location. Johannesburg has been identified as the second regional hub for the EME region and this has resulted in Epson investing in South Africa. Epson has also invested in a new regional office in Cape Town.
Technological Innovation
‘South Africa is looking after English-speaking territories for us. We also have an office in Casablanca, Morocco which is looking after French-speaking Africa,’ said Suat Ozsoy, VP commercial operations for Epson META-CW Asia, adding that the company have a lot of projects in different countries around Africa, and are working with local governments, with Johannesburg and Casablanca at the centre of it all.
He added that among the different technological markets, new label printers have been launched, from desktop to industrial applications, ‘Our goal is to make it easy for customers to choose depending on their requirement or demand. We have a lot of partners that we’ve signed contracts with, who will be selling those industrial label printers for us in South Africa.’
‘It’s about shortening the production process and making it more bespoke,’ added Neil Colquhoun, President, Epson EME, emphasising on the high speeds of the technologies, and decentralising some of the labelling processes, as some of these labels come from different continents and different cities. ‘So it’s about about bringing it closer to home.’
Ozsoy added that in terms of the signage market, there are new products that the company is working on: ‘There will be some introductions here as well, and there are products in the innovation centre that visitors can see. For us, signage quality is important, our head design is key for us and we invest a lot in it to get the maximum quality.’
Since Epson’s recent acquisition of Fiery – a leading provider of digital front end servers and workflow solutions for the print industry – the company has been able to enhance the production process, enabling a strong focus on consistency of production, as well as head monitoring, colour quality, and the ability to make smaller adjustments to the printing process.
EPSON SOUTH AFRICA
www.epson.co.za
