At the Eastern Printpack held in Kolkata in end-November, Ricoh unveiled two new digital production printers, one for the wideformat inkjet segment and another with an additional white ink for the document production segment. Importantly, Ricoh also made changes to their after-sales support packages to provide more user-friendly solutions for the printer.
Changing a 20-year-old practice
Abhijit Mukherjee, COO, PP-BU for Ricoh India and Anjana Saha, national business and marketing manager Ricoh India in an interaction with Indian Printer and Publisher on 10 December 2014 explained the reasons behind the strategic changes made by Ricoh to meet customer expectations in a competitive environment. Mukherjee says that ever since digital presses arrived, click charges have been a revenue stream that essentially cover maintenance and servicing and compensate for the coating, the ink or the toner and other consumables. The click charge concept is a 20-year-old trade practice right from the inception of digital presses in 1993.
The ground situation has changed drastically since then. More 4-color work is being printed today then ever before and volumes for the larger commercial printers located in the mass markets of the metros are producing as many as 2,00,000 plus copies each month and those in the BClass cities touch 50,000 copies a month. Commercial digital printing rates have crashed to below Rs 10 for A4 size sheets in the large metros making for uneven risk and profit sharing.
Mukherjee says, “Large commercial printers have started complaining that while they bear the risk of diminishing prices the digital press manufacturers gain from the rising volumes. We thought it was time we listened to our consumers and have been the first to move away from the beaten track. A new after-sales service policy and lifetime warranty packages have been announced that come with one, three and five-year warranty packs and toners sold to customers. This measure will increase market volumes as printers can quote competitive prices after acquiring the toner, without thinking of the click charges.”
Ricoh enters wide-format market
Two new printers were launched by Ricoh at the Eastern Printpack 2014 held from 27 to 30 November at the Milan Mela complex at Kolkata. The wide-format printers Ricoh Pro L 4130 and L 4160 are essentially meant for printing signage up to 10-feet wide for both indoor and outdoor advertising – signalling Ricoh’s entry to the large display and signage segment. With indoor office and mall advertising picking up this segment has created a new demand for indoor retail POP displays that are clearly different from outdoor advertising.
The Ricoh Pro L 4130 and L 4160 on-demand Piezo inkjet system delivers seven color latex inks printing – CMYK plus orange, green and white. It is capable of printing on a wide range of substrates like polyester, textiles, synthetic paper, coated and non-coated paper, PVC and tarpaulin at a resolution of 900 dpi x 1200 dpi. A Ricoh Software Rip is provided with the printers while Color Gate is used for color management.
New generation production printer
Ricoh also launched the new Ricoh Pro 7100X and the Ricoh Pro 7110X series printers that use the vertical cavity surface emitting laser VCSEL technology for razor sharp offset like image quality on a broad media support of up to 360 gsm. The drum and toner machine uses five drums including one for clear dry ink that gives an ability to highlight images for visual variety and make them pop off the page and draw attention to headlines or variable text. Apart from the clear dry ink printers can exercise the option of using a white ink on the fifth print station. The printing resolution is 1200 x 4800 dpi.
The heavy duty digital press has a cycle of 700,000 pages a month making it suitable for the high volume mid-segment commercial printing market. Workflow solutions are supported by EFI while an optional Ricoh professional booklet maker can also be attached.
