In the spring of 2010, Ferag and WRH Marketing joined forces with Le Figaro to invite representatives of the international trade press to the new L’Imprimerie production centre. At the time, the printing house was fully occupied with commissioning. The partners staged a “Mailroom-Rally” in order to highlight ten ways to add value and access new revenue streams on the basis of modern Ferag processing technology.

Some twelve months later, the company’s General Director André Menet was able to boast of a sweeping success: “Even in the first year, we were able to position our new print media marketing strongly in the French marketplace. Thanks to the high printing quality of the KBA Cortina and the one-of-a-kind options that come with the Ferag technology, we have added high-quality print products to our offering. We have moved into the luxury goods segment and now produce brochures for discerning fashion industry customers, classic watch brands, and also the jewellery business. The integrated processes with inserting, stitching and trimming allow us to create topical products incorporating high-gloss covers with extremely short lead times”, says André Menet with satisfaction.

Prospects for growth
After successfully acquiring new customers, L’Imprimerie was set on achieving a steady daily rate of 21 hours capacity utilization. This target has already been reached on Tuesday of each week.

In view of the expansion of commercial business, investments have been made in the sales department with two additional staff being trained for the special high-quality semi-commercials offering, including the new mailroom options.

André Menet outlines the future: “Thanks to the product enhancement options that Ferag postpress processing enables –  with inserted gimmicks, glued cards and MemoStick for proactive B2C communications plus the additional structuring options from the MultiSertDrum – we see excellent prospects from growth in the French marketplace”, he says with confidence.

Highly profitable utilization
In postpress processing, two inserting lines are in use, each equipped with one MultiSertDrum, two SNT trimming drums and Ferag’s StreamStitch stitching component. When it comes to expanding the offering, the plan allows for the integration of a UniDrum gatherer-stitcher drum into the overall Ferag installation.

As the first newspaper producer in the French market, André Menet is set on boosting income with inserted supplements and using semi-commercial production and the application of new advertising formats like MemoStick to achieve a highly profitable use of overall capacity. This strategy is allowing the media company to penetrate markets that in France have so far received little to no interest from newspaper printers. The investment is the first of its kind in France, and will allow L’Imprimerie to build a solid basis for the positive development of its business activities – which are focused on state-of-the-art print media production reflecting the new times. Which is where the central function of Ferag postpress processing comes in: “Because its right here that we achieve the real added value and the new value creation”, André Menet can confirm.