The company opened a new printing center in St. Petersburg, Florida/USA in 2007 and from there sent out 45 billion envelopes annually with discount coupons as direct mailing. With the implementation of a continuous JDF/JMF workflow system, they were able to reduce processing times of the products at the new site from four days to only eight hours.

A Muller Martini press delivery system receives the coupons directly from two Goss printing presses. The coupons are rolled up with twelve PrintRoll stations via Floorveyor and Topveyor conveyors and then finished. The entire press delivery system is controlled with MACOS (Master Control System) and communicates over JDF/JMF directly with the printing press. The high level of automation leads among other things to the fact that no manual processing whatsoever is necessary for the coupons processed by Cox, so the recipient is the first to hold them in their hands.

“In my opinion, this is the most highly automated printing plant in existence”, said CIPPI jury member Bill Lamparter from Printcom Consulting. “The production philosophy is, for me, a model for how a printing plant of the 21st century should be.” Cox received two second places in the categories of “Improvement of product quality and customer reactions” and “Best cost/benefit analysis and increase in efficiency.”
Each year the CIP4 organization (Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress) confers the CIPPI award to printing houses, publishers, and prepress providers for examples of outstanding integration based on JDF/JMF. The prize is distributed over three categories and four regions.