Facing your challenges. Finding your way through them.

A global energy crisis, rising paper costs, and labour management pressures, are just some of the tough business challenges Print Services Providers (PSPs) are having to juggle alongside their day to day business concerns. The conflict in Ukraine adds another, grim, dimension to the business climate.

In its snapshot of Great Britain, the most recent Printing Outlook from the British Print Industries Federation reported substrate costs was the top worry for 78% or respondents. Energy costs moved up to second place while skilled labour and the economic impact of the Coronavirus were also highly ranked.

These issues are not limited to one country, and here I consider some ways that all European PSPs can adapt to these challenging times:

 Energy

Aside from the savings that are achieved through print on demand by printing only what is required, Ricoh systems and solutions help reduce costs and environmental impact in the production process. They have been developed with energy reduction as a core consideration. For example, one of our most recent launches has been the new PeractoJet waterless and chemical-free textile ink in collaboration with Farbenpunkt. It reduces the environmental impact of global textile production by eliminating the need for high water and energy consuming stages of pre-treatment and post-treatment.

Highly efficient production presses also help. The Ricoh Pro™ C9200 digital colour sheet feed colour presses can achieve significant savings in energy costs through reduced warm up times and maximised uptime with advanced automation and asset utilisation.

Another way to minimise energy usage is by streamlining operations to create a seamless end to end process using software such as RICOH ProcessDirector™. It is designed to capture, transform, and manage information and processes in ways that can help achieve 100% output integrity, reduce costs, eliminate errors, increase productivity, streamline a variety of production environments, and increase profitability. It also helps reduce paper usage and waste by eliminating unwanted prints and merging white space to print multiple pages on one sheet.

 Paper

Paper prices have risen dramatically with many increases effective from the start of this month (April). RICOH ProcessDirector’s waste saving properties are very relevant than ever as a result, as is TotalFlow BatchBuilder which manages several jobs from multiple sources to streamline production. The economies of scale offered by high speed inkjet solutions such as the Ricoh Pro™ VC70000  also provide attractive benefits.

However, cost is not the only driving factor for saving paper. Paper shortages could endanger the post pandemic rebound of the graphic arts industry according to Members of the World Print & Communication Forum (WPCF), the global federation of printing associations. The less than rosy outlook for the supply of printed products for all economic markets follows a return in demand that is almost back to pre-pandemic levels in most countries that could be stalled by a number of factors including the ongoing strike in some Nordic paper mills.

Labour

The pandemic has promoted a great adoption of hybrid working. McKinsey reports that 20 to 25 percent of the workforces in advanced countries could work from home between three and five days a week. Ricoh’s own research has found that a quarter of employees would consider a job move to somewhere better equipped for remote working. With the right solutions PSPs can support hybrid workers equally at home or in the office. Central to this is keeping employees engaged and productive by automating manual processes and providing seamless user experiences. Time wasted retrieving documents and errors made inputting data lead to losses in business performance and employee motivation. Ricoh’s process automation solutions support greater accuracy, fast approvals, informed decision making, and better response times.

Another approach is ‘lights out’ operation. This is something Ricoh achieved when it created a seamless end to end production process for its Printed Memories portal for personalised postcards in support of Alzheimer’s Research. The personalisation functionality was provided by

Ricoh’s MarcomCentral while Ultimate Impostrip imposed print ready PDF files. RICOH ProcessDirector optimised and automated the workflow, TotalFlow Production Manager scheduled the jobs and Ricoh’s MIS solution Avanti Slingshot managed the print production. Each postcard job was seamlessly pre-flighted, batched, imposed on the sheet, and printed on a Ricoh digital colour sheetfed press.

 Environmental, Social, Governance

An important consideration for PSPs, too, is how they can take a more responsible approach to everyday production. To help operations make tangible improvements Ricoh has developed a rich portfolio of reduce, re-use and recycle products and services that are supported by Ricoh's own Comet Circle principle. PSPs can also analyse, optimise and neutralise carbon emissions with Ricoh’s Carbon Balanced Production Printing. It helps clients calculate the carbon footprint of each sheetfed toner print job, reduce or optimise the process wherever possible, and then offset the remaining, unavoidable emissions.

 Ricoh also supports PSPs with the:

·      Greenguard certificate for low chemical emissions for the Ricoh ProTM L5160e large format printer .

·       Smithers Pira Food Safety certificate for the Ricoh Pro™ C7200 and Ricoh Pro C9200 colour sheetfed presses .

·      ECO Passport for Ricoh Direct To Garment inks.

These are just some examples of the many enhancements, adaptations, and different ways of working that can all add up to make a meaningful difference. Available through your local Ricoh team – they’re here to help you navigate the headwinds and choppy waters and reach calmer, more sustainable havens, ahead.