Ricoh’s creative print production hardware and software solutions bagged two EDP awards recently at EDP Award Ceremony, FESPA, Hamburg. The awards were won by Ricoh’s digital book printing solution and Ricoh Pro C5200s and Ricoh Pro C5210s.
“Both these Ricoh solutions are designed to address the daily challenges our clients face. It is an honor that the EDP agrees that they are leaders in their field and tuned to the need of today’s print production environments,” said Eef De Ridder, director – commercial printing, Ricoh Europe.
Ricoh’s digital book printing solution is a TotalFlow solution that streamlines short run and on-demand book production. It enables book printers to seamlessly track and efficiently complete jobs. Developed to simplify and automate many shortrun digital production steps, it has a single web-based interface that helps automate production workflows, finishing operations and batch similar jobs together.
The Ricoh Pro C5200s and Ricoh Pro C5210s compact digital color sheetfed production systems help print-for-pay businesses, commercial printers, in-house print centers and corporate reprographics, and marketing environments, delivering highly responsive creative print.
With the growing popularity of internet and eCommerce websites like Amazon and Flipkart, the demand for short-run and on-demand book production is expanding in India as well. This development is bringing a major shift in book publishing as investment in inventories will reduce. With digital short-run printing, over ordering, over stocking and over distribution can be avoided. Also, this opens avenues for authors and writers who cannot afford to get themselves published. Many digital print houses in India are installing high-speed digital production printers to tap into this segment.
Recently, Mumbai-based Manifold Graphics, which has been in the digital printing business for 15 years, ventured into selling audio books, eBooks, online publishing and printing of eBooks through its online venture pustaksagar.com, which will mainly focus on all Indian regional languages and presently sells eBooks in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. Not only does Manifold Graphics sell eBooks but also offers print-on-demand services for as less a quantity as one. To be fully ready with the latest technology to back the new venture, Manifold Graphics has bought a high-speed production printer Ricoh C9110.
The C9110 is a dry toner digital printer with maximum speed of 130 A4 ppm. It has maximum resolution of 1,200 x 4,800 dpi and can print onto uncoated, textured and coated media from 52 gsm to 400 gsm. The C9110 supports advanced external EFI Fiery servers.
Chennai-based PM Digital Products, a one-stop print shop, delivering high-quality fully finished products, has been a Ricoh user for the past several years. Headed by P. Chellappan, an ardent Ricoh fan, the company’s production facility houses a Ricoh 107EX monochrome printer. With speeds up to 110 ppm, the press features friction feeding and saddle stitching options.
“We are in the process of trading our existing machine for a newer model with vaccum feeding capability, but without the saddle stitching option. Currently, we are still zeroing in our options as to which model to buy,” said Chellappan.
