Ricoh SA and Heidelberg Southern Africa have formalised their local partnership. The agreement gives Heidelberg customers access to Ricoh’s mid-range digital presses following the global agreement signed between the two companies.
The two local companies have both appointed key personnel to interact and provide sales, marketing, support and maintenance services.
The local partnership addresses demands for a hybrid of offset and digital solutions that give our customers the capability to offer variable data printing, shorter runs, and cost-effective, high quality offset printing, said Alan Austin, sales and marketing director at Ricoh SA.
Heidelberg has a full set of solutions for the local market and by adding Ricoh to the portfolio, we are able to provide a complete set from digital to finishing in a seamless workflow. Both Heidelberg and Ricoh work on similar principles and strive to be the complete solution provider for the graphic arts industry, said Jimmy Joujou, MD of Heidelberg Southern Africa.
The partnership revolves around Heidelberg selling its new digital range called Linoprint C. The Linoprint C series is based on Ricohs latest high quality digital colour presses. The Linoprint C901 heads up the range for short run applications. It is a high speed system with Ricoh PxP chemical toner. The entry level Linoprint C651/751 series were added last year.
The Linoprint C series is equipped with the new Heidelberg Prinect Digital Print Manager. Even without integration into a complete workflow, this system provides users with a highly efficient and transparent digital print solution with a wide range of functions, such as variable data management and inline finishing systems. Optional integration into the Prinect print shop workflow creates seamless hybrid connectivity between offset and digital printing that is unique in the industry.
Heidelberg and Ricoh will continue to operate separately but extremely closely. The joint team harnesses the combined expertise which will be of great benefit to the local market, said Austin.
Heidelberg will sell all new digital equipment while Ricoh will provide all the necessary support and back-up, added Joujou.
Vaughan Patterson, sales manager for the production printing business group at Ricoh SA, who leads partner interactions with Heidelberg, said, The Pro C series was our first move into this space and in Europe it was the best selling equipment in the category in its launch month. We expect the series to perform extremely well in the local market and early interest is significant, particularly following our exhibition at the 2012 Africa Print Expo.
Warren Jones is responsible for sales of digital equipment at Heidelberg Southern Africa and, building on his experience in prepress and consumables, heads up the Ricoh partner interaction. Heidelberg has a little over 80% market share in South Africa so this is an enormous opportunity for Ricoh to interact with those clients through us but, most importantly, the partnership with Ricoh is a great opportunity for us to share the potential business benefits of this relationship with our customers to enhance the value that they derive from us, said Jones.
The Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition with Heidelberg front end, known as the Linoprint C901, addresses the needs of commercial printers to build a high quality, digital colour printing environment. It features a production speed of 90 pages per minute (ppm) in a market segment that would typically have monthly production volumes between 80 000 to 300 000 A4 pages and more. The C901 provides high quality and is ideally suited to meet the expanding demand for shorter print-runs, variable data printing and rapid delivery on a wide range of substrates.
