MAILCENTER: Processing Imported Mail on U.S. Soil

The Zenger Group - Printing Services Network is partnering with the world's largest private cross-border business mail operator—Spring Global Mail of the Netherlands—to process U.S.-bound mail originating from Canada and Europe and place it into the USPS mail stream.

Zenger, with 65-employees, is a cooperative of five firms in three plants with 55,000 sq.ft of production facilities in Buffalo, NY. The new service is enabled by a new scanning and sorting system, an Olympus II MLOCR (Multi-Line Optical Character Recognition) Sorter, which Spring moved to Zenger from its Mississauga, ON facility.

Spring management expects to work with Zenger on additional services, such as local printing of files delivered electronically, accelerating delivery and lowering distribution costs for Spring customers—which should deliver new business for Zenger. “If you look at what both companies are bringing to this relationship, we really do complement each other,” says Lou Laforet, VP Europe and the Americas for Spring Global Mail. “I can easily see our joint business growing considerably.”

To perform the new mail processing work, Zenger installed at its Ulrich Mail Div. an advanced scanning and sorting system that can improve mail service and achieve new postal discounts for other Zenger customers as well.

“We can now enter a new mailing service market for commingling that is occupied by very few competitors, none of whom are based in Buffalo,” says Stephen Zenger, president and CEO of The Zenger Group.

Commingling or combining mailings, often from multiple senders, helps mailers qualify for automated postage discounts available from the U.S. Postal Service only for larger volume mailings. Zenger expects that as much as half the mail processed by the system will be for its own customers.

The Spring-Zenger partnership initially was formed last August, a result of new USPS Delivery Point Validation (DPV) regulations that took effect, changing the way mail qualifies for automation rates—and requiring certification to occur on U.S. soil. Previously, Spring performed CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System) certification, which standardizes addresses for automated processing by the USPS, at its Mississauga location. The firm sought a U.S. partner to help retain these services.

Since initiating the service, Zenger has processed an average of over 23,000 letters and flat-mail pieces per day for both First-Class and Standard mail.

Your GAM MailCenter reporter attended a post-Thanksgiving tour of the Pitney Bowes Document Imaging Technology Center in Danbury, CT. Approximately 450 people are employed in the 250,000-sq.ft. facility, of which some 95,000 sq.ft. is used for the manufacture of mail inserting and sorting machines.

Pitney's flagship APS inserter can process up to 22,000 envelopes an hour. In total, between 400 and 450 of the giant inserters are produced annually in the factory, which went to a lean manufacturing work-cell model 2.5 years ago. Envelopes whip through high-speed sorters at a rate of 10 per second. Of Pitney Bowes' $5.7 billion in revenue, some $2.3 billion is derived from the U.S. mailing business.

Earlier this month, P-B introduced a new product for mailers: the DI950 Universal Feeder, which incorporates an enhanced DI950 inserter, a new universal feeder, an optional high-capacity loader, advanced scanning and enhanced booklet feeding capabilities. It collates up to 15,000 sheets or 5,400 finished mail pieces/hr.

The new DI950 base unit also allows mailers to produce up to 200,000 finished mail pieces per month. The DI950 Universal Feeder expands the range of available jobs by now offering the ability to feed booklets and inserts up to 0.16´´ thick.

In addition, the system can support a wide range of new and existing scanning applications, including barcode and Optical Mark Recognition (OMR). Custom scanning options further enhance the capabilities of the system by allowing it to run a variety of scanning jobs, including ones with longer codes and wider fields.

The company also has launched a new Website about the USPS's Intelligent Mail barcode: www.pbpostalinfo.com

In November, Pitney Bowes announced it is considering spinning off its $1-billion management services business (PBMS), which outsources mail, print and document-management solutions. The PrintWorks Solution, including 1,600 on-site locations in the U.S., features Canon, Konica, Sharp and Xerox monochrome and color equipment within, for example, law firms and large government agencies.

P-B's off-site regional processing centers even offer wide-format printing. The subsidiary employs 13,000 people.

Last September, PBMS was ranked the seventh “greenest” outsourcing company based on its environmental record, as listed by Brown & Wilson Group, edging out Xerox for the top slot among document-processing outsourcers.

Neopost has introduced Mail Piece Production Control (MPPC), a non-intrusive 2D barcode (shown on facing page) that can even be printed within the address area to allow audit trails for secured mail processing. MPPC creates an audit trail for each production job, providing end-to-end quality control from print to insertion and detailed line-item reports.

Complementing Neopost's Print-Machine output management software, the MPPC provides folding/inserting monitoring and validation to support mailings requiring high levels of privacy, time sensitivity and regulatory compliance. It helps protect against serious liabilities and regulatory penalties due to non-compliance or confidentiality breaches, allowing for secure mailing of sensitive documents such as health records, financial information and legal notices.

Mailing print stream enhancement begins with a unique, non-intrusive barcode ID printed on each document. These tracking marks minimize document formatting and printing requirements as barcodes fit within the address block.

The MPPC validates inserted documents with barcode scanning hardware that reads each unique ID. This scanning technology allows each document to be identified once processed as they are inserted, enabling reconciliation of missing or damaged documents. Barcodes are compared in real-time to databases.