Canon Production Printing, known as Océ until the end of 2019, is a Netherlands-based subset of Canon that develops, manufactures and sells printing and copying hardware and related software. The product line includes office printing and copying machinery, production printers, and wide-format printers for both technical documentation and color display graphics. The history of Océ as a company can be traced back to 1877, albeit its printing-related activities began in 1919. The company has research, development, and production facilities in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the Czech Republic, Romania and the United States. The acquisition of Océ by Canon Inc. of Japan took place in 2010.

History

Founding

Océ began in 1877 as a family business manufacturing machines for coloring butter and margarine. The company's founder, chemist Lodewijk van der Grinten, supplied this coloring to farmers and then this was supplied to the margarine factories of Jurgens and Van den Bergh. In 1930, the margarine factories of Jurgens and Van den Bergh and the English Lever Brothers merged to become Unilever. From 1877 to 1972, Unilever used only the coloring produced by the Venlo factory in its margarine. In 1919 the grandson of Lodewijk, Louis van der Grinten, became interested in the blueprint process used for producing wide-format technical drawings. At that time, blueprint paper was extremely light-sensitive, and had a very short shelf life. Louis invented a coating that made blueprint paper last up to a year. This is considered the company's first step into providing document solutions.

Company milestones, including acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships

Products and organization

Océ has three Strategic Business Units: Digital Document Systems (small format), Wide Format Printing Systems (wide format) and Océ Business Services.

Small format (up to A3 size)

Wide format (larger than A3 size)

Business services

This includes basic document services such as mail and print-room management, scanning, archiving and desktop-publishing services. Other services includes printer fleet management, on-demand printing, document-design services, and management of legal documents for litigation. The firm also offers outsourcing of insurance-policy process management.