Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The company will be unveiling to a UK audience a proprietary and potentially revolutionary new technology that renders the photoconductor belt – the part of the machine that captures the image – completely reusable.

The organic photoconductor belt is ‘grown,’ rather then made, and once it has reached the end of its usable life, it is simply exposed to UV radiation to ‘re-activate’ the surface of the belt.

UK marketing manager, Edward Hudson said: “Our products have been designed with the environment as one of our first considerations. From the virtually ozone free emissions of our copy press system to our mailbox technology for the reduction of wasted prints.”

Hudson said that Océ was in the process of fine-tuning a bold new strategy that would potentially give the company the world lead in sustainability, hinting that a formal announcement would be made shortly. “Watch this space,” he said.

Océ has a sustainability record stretching back over 130 years.

In the 1870’s, founder Lodewijk van der Grinten’s earliest scientific achievements were to investigate and subsequently improve the quality of drinking water in the company’s home town of Venlo and to invent butter and margarine colouring agents made from raw vegetable materials rather than chemicals.

It is a little known fact that margarine was black prior to this innovation.

Today, Océ is active in approximately 80 countries, employing 23,000 people worldwide and with annual revenues in excess of £2.1bn.

Océ printing systems produce millions of transaction documents each day, such as bank statements and utility bills; in offices around the world; newspaper production and wide format display graphics.

The company employs 1233 in the UK, 258 of which are based in the UK HQ in Brentwood.