It’s 2010, and I’m on a train travelling purposefully to Chemnitz, the former East German city previously known as Karl-Marx-Stadt, where a heap of press tech flags another page in a remarkable story.
The six-tower Colorman XXL has QI Press Controls’ IDS and “everything else you can imagine, amid its tightly-integrated and interconnected systems and software, including robots and the ability to ‘call home’ if it’s feeling queasy,” I wrote.
“If the ‘one touch’ printing machine at the Freie Presse had a social media account,” I speculated, “would it tweet with ice-maiden resolve, ‘Thanks, but I can do that myself’?”
Above all, my memory of the visit was of press operators monitoring performance and “ostensibly, at least, making detail adjustments” on the two consoles, while not realising that the colour density system was actually “doing fine by itself”.
A memorable trip into Saxony that flagged a moment at which tech was shown to be able to do a job better than the humans responsible could: “Can man do better than machine… and if not, how do you let him know that,” I asked.
And a highlight in the story of technology company QIPC-EAE that was this week punctuated by the news of a buy-in by Düsseldorf-based PE firm Holland Capital.
The announcement suggested that founding partners Menno Jansen and Erik van Holten might be taking a back seat, but Jansen tells me that’s not the case, assuring GXpress, “I’m still very much on board and actively involved.
“So from that perspective not much has changed,” he says, although agreeing there might be more time for sailing, a passion we both share.
Much has, however, changed from the days Jansen and van Holten followed many famous precedents and set up an office in a garage (the latter’s). Since then, there have been moves to better and expanded accommodation, plus a succession of acquisitions and achievements, many of which I’ve witnessed in one way or another. On one occasion, GXpress agreed an advertising contract with a German press engineering company, only to have it “go quiet”, a euphemism for the metamorphosis that led to EAE becoming part of the QI Press Controls’ group… with whom happily, we have enjoyed a strong partnership.
Looking back, that partnership has taken us to a variety of locations, including the train trip to Chemnitz from Hamburg, where IfraExpo was being held. And to a few more press halls, where the emerging technology again spoke for itself.
From that garage in 1996, a concept that would change the measurement and control systems market for web offset printing presses forever has been followed by numerous milestones – not to mention a patent battle or two – and the acquisition of several others in the market, taking the company to a leading position.
The GXpress files include the installation of numerous new and ever more sophisticated kit, such as that of Newsprinters in the UK, where a system for condition monitoring of its presses was just the latest outcome of an ongoing relationship, by then already seven years old. (Pictured is Jansen with Broxbourne operations director Steve Whitehead and Mark Ellington)
And of course, nearer home to Fairfax Media, which installed QIPC’s closed-loop colour density technology in the second stage of its North Richmond control upgrade. (Below, Bob Lockley and senior managemement seal the deal)
That the plant – one of several upgraded to allow pre-Nine Fairfax to print its metro and national dailies at regional sites in NSW and Victoria – was later “consigned to history” is part of the story of the newspaper industry, felt especially sharply in the “mature” Australian market.
And an opportunity to relate how QIPC/EAE has nimbly taken a place in the intra-logistics industry, with Aussie retail hero CottonOn (below) among its customers. Jansen told us at the time that without that business, turnover would have fallen 40 per cent.
Looking back, there have been so many highlights – and orders – since that first IRS sale to Janssen Pers in the Netherlands, product developments including control integrations to use just one desk or one single camera, and marketing highlights – the ‘true colours’ campaign and those white suits – and the 2016 DRUPA (pictured, top) when sales topped 6.3 million Euros (A$10.48 million).
It’s clear the spirit of innovation has not disappeared, and with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of systems running across the world – with enough orders in India alone to prompt the opening of a second office – the story continues.
So here’s to the future, and as the group prepares to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, enough action and excitement to keep the founding partners actively involved. We wish them good health and good sailing!
Peter Coleman