NexPress A Worthy Competitor

NexPress is ready to battle for business in the digital color printing arena with its NexPress 2100.

by Mark Smith

Rochester, N.Y., might seem an unlikely place to be ground zero in the next big battle for dominance of the digital color printing market. That is, until one takes into account the city is the corporate hometown of NexPress Solutions LLC (a Heidelberg/Kodak joint venture) and Xerox Corp.

Print 01 brought a temporary shift in the battlefield to Chicago, setting up a head-to-head bid for attention between the NexPress 2100 and Xerox iGen3 (formerly FutureColor) digital presses. (For its part, Xerox contends that its DocuColor 2000 Series is the true competitor to the NexPress, and iGen3 is a step up in performance.)

In preparation, both companies decided to launch advance campaigns by inviting members of the trade press to Rochester for first-hand product inspections and status updates.

The NexPress 2100 prints 4,200 8-1/2x11˝ four-color, one-sided pages per hour, or 2,100 four-over-four color pages. It can print stocks from 80 to 300 gsm, with the "DryInk" transferred by an intermediate blanket (NexBlanket) that is said to conform to the substrate surface for better image transfer. This offset-press-like design also reportedly extends the life of the imaging cylinder.

Just Cents Per Page

The manufacturer promised to release more detailed product information at PRINT 01, but its initial projections put the cost of output (in cents per page) in the single digits. Configurations of the printing system will start at around $350,000, with the first three likely to be targeted to short-run, quick-turnaround printing, simple variable-data pieces, and complex variable-data jobs.

NexPess Solutions is saying that it intends to "selectively place machines for the next two years" and already has the first 48 customers lined up. This includes sites in North America and Europe. Manufacturing capacity is expected to remain in the low hundreds of units per year for the time being.

Venkat Purushotham, NexPress president and CEO, explains that the company is more focused on seeing the total number of pages produced grow dramatically, rather than the installed base of presses.

"I'm more interested in seeing the first billion pages printed rather than 500 units sold," Purushotham asserts. He adds that the manufacturer considers customer satisfaction to be its number one priority, and it doesn't want to repeat the experiences some other digital press introductions had in the market by not meeting expectations.

Do-it-yourself Maintenance

A key element of the company's plan to improve reliability and keep costs down is the adoption of an engineering concept it calls ORCs—operator replaceable components, Purushotham says. More than 40 press components reportedly can be replaced by an operator in a matter of seconds to minutes, without the need for special tools.

To help ensure the press meets customer expectations, a developmental version of the NexPress 2100 was put into operation at Spire in Boston for almost a year. For most of that time, the company reports, it sold work produced on the press, even though it was restricted from revealing what device it was using.

Rochester-based Cohber, a printing and communications company, holds the distinction of receiving the first commercial unit to come off the NexPress 2100 assembly line.

The company already had been operating a DocuColor 100 (based on the Xeikon engine) to produce custom marketing programs and has two "idea people" on staff who help clients build those programs, according to Howard "Buzz" Webber, Jr., chairman and CEO. Webber adds that reliability was his real hot button in evaluating this new digital press, but he also liked the fact that there were no click charges and buyers are given options for how the press is configured and operated.