Inkjet & Digital Printing

Publishers Graphics chooses Ricohs inkjet technology to meet customers demands for quality and speed

Wednesday 31. January 2018 - Leading book manufacturer finds the RICOH Pro VC60000 as the only platform reliable enough to meet their customer commitment of 48-hour turn times

Ricoh USA, Inc. today announced that Publishers’ Graphics (PG) has chosen its market-leading inkjet technology to further grow its business by enabling them to meet a key demand of their publisher customers: a 48-hour turnaround time on color books. PG, a manufacturer of short-run books for the trade, specialty and self-publication markets, selected the RICOH Pro VC60000 to help drive those faster turn times, deliver higher volumes and lower costs. As they look to expand beyond the 6.5 million-plus books produced on-demand in 2016, PG has centered their continuous feed inkjet strategy around Ricoh technology, the only solution they feel capable of producing short run color books.

Established in 1996, PG had previously relied on toner-based printing technology, but inkjet’s quality and comparatively low price point encouraged the printer to transition away from toner. Over the decades, the company has grown to three locations, building its reputation on well-executed short runs with an eye on driving customers’ profits. As their business continued to grow, PG sought new ways to increase productivity and meet increasingly short turn time requests from their valued customers. Citing Ricoh’s customer-partnership approach, its services expertise and its strong relationships with partners throughout the print ecosystem, PG chose Ricoh’s technology.

With Ricoh, on-demand short turns are simple and reliable. PG creates a digital catalog for a publisher and makes it available on the publisher’s online bookstore as well as PG’s own, PGDirect. From there, customers can quickly and easily place orders for a title, and PG prints and ships those orders within 48 hours. The RICOH Pro VC60000’s uptime, image quality and speed help make these turn times – and, by extension, this business model – possible.

“Ricoh’s inkjet technology is the greatest news for publishers of books with color pages. The short turn times mean not having to inventory books – or absorb the costs of unsold inventory,” said Nick Lewis, President, Publishers’ Graphics. “Ricoh technology is truly revolutionary and is helping us better deliver each day for our clients. Their team is clearly invested in our success, and they’ve worked closely with us and their own partners, from paper vendors to leaders in the pre- and post-press space, to help us grow. Without the RICOH Pro VC60000’s speed and reliability and our newly streamlined workflows, we could not consistently deliver the 48-hour turn times we’re known for.”

The RICOH Pro VC60000 provides a function-rich, comprehensive solution for customers new to digital, inkjet or color. The platform’s Ricoh printheads and inks, which leverage dynamic variable drop technology, are capable of producing offset-replaceable print quality with physical resolutions of up to 1,200 x 1,200 dpi. It supports a wide range of fluid types, paper stocks and file formats, including PDF, PDFVT, JDF/JMF, PostScript and AFP/IPDS. The advanced color gamut, which has been certified by Pantone and Fogra, helps PG better serve the four-color trade market. With its modular architecture, the RICOH Pro VC60000 is highly configurable to meet users’ unique needs, and highly scalable to grow with users and protect their investments as those needs change.

“Inkjet print quality has come so far in recent years, and book publishers are taking notice, especially as pressure increases to turn around shorter runs in faster timeframes,” said John Fulena, Vice President, Commercial & Industrial Printing Business Group, Ricoh USA, Inc. “We listen carefully to our customers and work hard to provide the full range of solutions that directly address their pain points. Putting the RICOH Pro VC60000’s speed, reliability and productivity to work for a book manufacturer is an exciting next step as more of the book industry turns to continuous feed inkjet.”

In addition to the RICOH Pro VC60000, PG added three RICOH Pro C7110 and one RICOH Pro 8220 to serve specialty needs.