Many businesses are seeing the world in a different light in these crazy days of lockdown, furlough, queuing for a supermarket, long hair, and daily government updates. Printers are certainly no exceptions.
Print is – and will be in the new future – an essential business for the promotion and marketing of companies right across the board. Newspapers are certainly playing an important part of lockdown – bringing trustworthy, reliable news to the masses. And so, after we emerge, blinking in the sunlight, will marketing materials, local newsletters, customer information pages, personalised mail, and more. These will all be key items of printed work that will serve to remind target markets of products and services.
Digital printing businesses have grown significantly in recent years. Targeted at short run work, personalisation, and fast turnaround jobs, the tech giants behind the digital print machines have illustrated a mastery in creating complex contracts that generally create one winner – a clue: it’s not the printer! Smoke and mirrors have been successfully employed to squirrel away negatives for the printer, who has been allowed to enjoy a few small victories en route to the final agreement.
However, our current unforeseen situation has highlighted one specific area of such contractual obligations that could seriously damage printers the world over: the previously agreed minimum monthly click charge. The contract specifically details an amount of prints that will be produced – a standing charge you might call it. The large digital printer manufactures are generally faceless organisations that can hide behind contracts with little room for flexibility.
Whether the printer produces zero or precious little work for weeks on end, the machine supplier will still expect his “pound of flesh” – the payment previously agreed to. The minimum monthly click charge requires payment, even though a business might be making no money at all. In short, we have a situation that ensures digital printers are being charged for not working!
For many it might well be the case of shutting the stable door well after the horse has bolted, but undoubtedly there will be businesses that need to review the costs of digital and litho. Litho typically presents no such click charge. Perhaps the jump to digital was made too soon?
Personalisation – the run of one – is the single area that litho can’t compete with, but the vast majority of printers using digital equipment do not have any great volume of personalised print work. That still remains a specialised service.
Litho printing, when compared, only costs when you print. A cost that increases in competitiveness as the print run grows in number. With increased automation and the low cost of consumables, litho is becoming increasingly competitive on those small runs that were previously considered digital work.
The advances that have been made in UV instant drying – specifically LED-UV – to produce dry-to-touch prints at the delivery end of the press takes away the digital advantage of immediacy of print.
So, a cheaper to run press, with matched instant print service, and no risk of paying for not printing: perhaps litho still presents opportunities in new the changed world.
ENDS
GenesisNews 