Print is very much alive

Introduce yourself and your role at Ricoh Europe

My name is Erwin Busselot, I have worked for Ricoh Europe for 14 years, and I am responsible for what we call Business Innovations Solutions. This includes business development, marketing, and a lot of the sales and customer activity.

Introduce Ricoh and the services it provides

Ricoh was founded quite a while ago in 1936 in Japan. It has a rich heritage and history in many different markets. Most people will know Ricoh from photo cameras still or from printers and fax machines, but in general one could say it has basically 70 years of legacy in improving workflows and workspace for businesses. Ricoh’s active presence in the print industry dates back to Drupa 2008 where we showed for the first time specific solutions for the print industry.

Since 2008 we have of course come indeed a long way and Ricoh has now a wide portfolio featuring cut sheet toner presses, continuous feed inkjet presses, large-format and flatbed printers, production workflow, colour management, and marketing management software. This covers the commercial printing market, the corporate and enterprise market, and the industrial market in which we focus on décor and digital textile printing.

What changes has Ricoh seen recently in ink products and how is this changing the industry?

I’ve been in the industry since ’89 so I’ve seen the industry changing a lot. Basically, every part of the graphic arts chain has been digitised.

Digital printing is basically one of the last parts and it is steadily growing and gaining more volume as such that since 2018 actually more than half of all digital print volume is printed on inkjet presses. Inkjet is a non-impact technology and has less technical restrictions (in quality, speed and media) than electrophotograpy or toner printing. However, it was the breakthrough of water-based pigment inks that made this all possible allowing inkjet presses to print at offset speeds, with offset quality, on offset papers. That was quite important in commercial printing.

We look then to the sign and display market where the involvement of inks is also important. Here, Ricoh recently launched new latex inks on our EDP award winning PRO L 5100 series large-format printers. It’s Ricoh’s own formula and because it’s a water-based resin (latex) ink, there are no solvents, no smell, no VOC’s, and no ventilation needed. It dries quickly (which improves productivity especially if further finishing is needed). It also dries at a lower temperature (50-60°), which benefits energy consumption. Today, this is quite important for a lot of printers in the case of prices of energy.

Furthermore, we use this in those wide-format and flatbed printers combined with our own print heads, so the combination of the printheads and the inks result in good resolution, fine lines, and subtle gradation which allows for perfect skin tones. The low viscosity of the inks also benefits quality. If you add then the green and orange colours to it, it allows us to increases colour gamut which allows printers to address better company or brand colours.

Last but not least there’s the white ink. A lot of people don’t realise that white ink is quite an important ink to be used in commercial printing and also in industrial printing, but white ink allows us of course also to use applications in décor and industrial applications to print on other media than just paper.

On a similar note, what innovations and new colours are making an impact with businesses and printers?

New colours are making quite a big impact on businesses and printers. I just spoke about inkjet and its advances, but also toner printing has evolved and developed new capabilities especially in what we call the print enhancement domain. The ability to use a fifth colour in your digital press for print enhancement gives printers a lot more possibilities for new applications.

 

In the past we had fluorescent colours, invisible red ink and white as I’ve mentioned before, but last year we’ve added gold and silver as special colours. Measured by the reactions on our direct mail campaign and webinar, I must say there is a lot of interest in these capabilities. We are not surprised as recent research has shown that there are very good margins to be made on these applications using these type of special effects that the inks like gold and silver allow.

Could you tell us about some of the success Ricoh has had with sustainability?

Sustainability is in Ricoh’s DNA, but to give a few practical examples relevant for the print industry: our large-format printers, the L5100 series got the Greenguard Gold certificate for low chemical emissions; and our cutsheet toner presses, the C9000 and C7000 series got the PIRA food safety certificate that allows people to print, for instance, packaging or inserts that go along with food products as well. Our Direct to Garment printers got the ECO passport for their inks; and of course last but not least we should not forget Ricoh’s Carbon Calculator which is a tool that allows our customers to analyse their carbon emissions, but also to optimise their carbon footprint and to neutralise their remaining unavoidable emissions. So that’s a quick overview of some of the activities that are in the sustainability area.

 
What new markets and areas do you think print businesses can go into?

New markets of course are always about business development and also an area in which Ricoh endeavours and has undertaken a lot of activities in. It’s what we call the EDGE Business Development Programme. We developed that because some of our customers told us the main differentiator between our graphic arts vendors in the industry is the way that they support them, the customers, with business development. So it’s also important to see when you’re talking about new markets and areas that print will go, it’s important to state that we believe and probably so do our customers, that print is probably more alive than ever. It’s definitely not disappearing, it’s just changing.

Print, if you think about it and if you look to all the possibilities where print is used, is probably one of the best ways to manufacture something. Of course, we’ve all seen the 3D printer that prints a house but think about all the things like textile and wallpaper, all things where you print beyond the paper.

 
So print enhancement has already been mentioned as new business for customers, but in industrial markets textile printing has become very hot and so has wallpaper and décor printing.

Anything else you would like to add?

Maybe best is to finish with Ricoh’s concept of Henkaku. Henkaku is a Japanese word which means transformational innovation. You might have already heard of Kaizen, and Kaizen means innovation with small steps. Henkaku means big leaps forward in technology innovation. We do this to futureproof our customers’ business because in a lot of conversations with our customers we have learned resilience and sustainability for a business is the closest to their heart. They need a partner, not so much a supplier, but a partner to keep them sustainable. So hence, we launched the concept of Henkaku and we have embodied that in all of our solutions, products, and services that we bring to the market.

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