Australia Post said this week that it acquired the global operations of PrintSoft, including PrintSoft Americas Inc.
The acquisition became effective July 1.
PrintSoft provides variable print software solutions for corporate, financial, utility, direct marketing and service bureau environments. It has 5,500 systems installed in more than 50 countries.
This will be the first time that Australia Post has owned a business operating in the United States.
PrintSoft will operate as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary of Australia Post and will retain the existing PrintSoft management team. The acquisition includes the Australian, U.S., German and Czech offices, and the global headquarters will be based in its current Cheltenham, Melbourne, office.
Australia Post said PrintSoft is an ideal platform for the development and marketing of Australia Post's “Post eLetter” service. Australia Post aims to make this product, with its drastic cost and operational savings, available to businesses in Australia and worldwide. PrintSoft will offer to license this technology to the global mailing industry.
In 2002, Australia Post and PrintSoft jointly developed the eLetter service, which lets clients create letters, invoices, statements and postcards on their desktops, then securely submit them electronically to the Australia Post service bureau, where they are automatically aggregated, sorted and produced with bar codes for optimal production and postage savings. This combination of part electronic network delivery and final-leg physical delivery is referred to as hybrid mail.
The PrintSoft software that powers Australia Post's Post eLetter was initially developed to help a major financial institution consolidate costly desktop mail production processes across its organization. Now more than 80 Australian companies use the service to produce and mail 12 million documents annually.
Early users of Post eLetter include Australia's largest retailer, Coles Myer, with 1,900 stores, and one of Australia's largest banks, National Australia Bank.
PrintSoft's existing range of document composition products will continue to be supported and enhanced. PrintSoft will continue to focus on helping customers with its existing products and on driving new products to market.
