Sign Print gets a Ricoh and PixelGlow from Monotech

Kerala printer enters the commercial printing segment

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Baiju KV with wife Anu Baiju with the Ricoh Pro C7200X (Monotech)

Kerala’s Sign Print Innovate Printing Solutions has forayed into commercial printing with a Ricoh C7200X digital production press and a PixelGlow digital enhancement press. Both the presses have been installed by Monotech Systems.

Sign Print, based in Thodupuzha in Kerala, is a well-known signage and commercial print service provider in the region. The company has been a Monotech Systems customer over the last decade, serving clients from different market segments. They have been the user of a Monotech Pixeljet UV digital large-format printer for signage applications.

Baiju KV, the director of Sign Print, said they felt it was time to diversify, and that is why they picked up the Ricoh Pro C7200X from Monotech Systems—a partner of Ricoh Asia-Pacific and an authorized distributor of Ricoh digital presses in India.

Baiju said the new Ricoh digital press is a highly versatile graphic arts edition with a 5-color printing capacity. It is highly stable for high-quality print production at high speed.

Sign Print has clients across Kerala. Baiju said they work with a host of chocolate companies such as RITS, Tim Tam, and Fresco. In addition, the client list includes brands from other segments such as education, jewellery, hospitality, and FMCG.

The Ricoh Pro C7200X runs at a speed of up to 85 ppm to churn up to 360 GSM banner sheet duplex with the 5th color station. With an increasing range of special colors, including white (available in a single pass), clear, invisible red, and various neon options, the Ricoh digital press is an ideal choice for companies such as Sign Print, who want their customers to demand more color choices.

More color choices mean more revenue. As compared to any conventional CMYK press, the Ricoh Pro C7200X is a perfect choice for vibrant print outputs on short-run production that appease our demanding customers,” mentioned Baiju. They also bought a PixelGlow digital UV and foiling system.

The Ricoh Pro C7200X can print a wider range of jobs with double-sided, oversize printing up to 700 mm in length and on heavy-weight stocks up to 360 GSM. Nevertheless, with the new digital press, we gain new momentum to impress our customers with the ability to add more colors to print jobs—for example, highlight with neon yellow, provide security with invisible red, boost gamut with pink, and give the imagery a lift with clear varnish.”

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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