ROI is what it’s all about, which is why Fujifilm believes it has a way of convincing you that buying an Onset makes sense.
Fujifilm has recently announced a new initiative to encourage printers of all sizes to take its Onset Challenge (see Cover Story) – the intention being to prove the impressive ROI of the range, which has so recently been extended with the S40.
For those unfamiliar with the Onset family of wide-format, flatbed inkjet printers manufactured by Inca (but distributed exclusively by Fujifilm in Europe) there are now three models, the S20, S40 and S70. All take advantage of Fujifilm’s Uvijet UV ink technology, offer high productivity and come in various configurations. At first sight, an investment in an Onset (with production speeds from 250m2 per hour to over 700m2 per hour) may appear beyond the reach of smaller wide-format printers but delve into the ROI and this isn’t necessarily the case. As Tudor Morgan, group marketing manager, graphics – wide-format, Fujifilm Europe, points out: “The Onset is a beast, but it’s not a monster – you don’t need huge volume to make it your friend.”
It is clear that there is a direct correlation between investment costs and productivity with UV inkjet technology. What is not always so clear is how this trade-off can be used to generate revenue and profit for a wide-format printer. Many companies are replacing traditional analogue methods with UV inkjet, and in doing so are benefiting from a lower print cost per metre, but there are also opportunities to rationalise multiple digital wide-format machines with a single, highly productive flatbed.
Below are highlighted two real life examples of where making an investment in an Onset can pay back in a short period of time. These examples involve one large and one smaller user who shall known here as Printer X and Printer Y.
Printer X is a high volume printer, generating high quality, cost effective images for the graphic display market, and was initially interested in investing in an Onset in order to improve efficiency. Already housing multiple technologies under one roof, including offset, it was keen to determine whether the financial investment made in an Onset would provide a better ROI than an investment in additional offset device. A detailed comparison of the company’s print economics against the Onset was undertaken, which highlighted that Printer X could save approximately £1.12 per metre of print or £1.68 per print by switching to an Onset.
Putting this in context, on typical run lengths of 450 or 900, taking into account time to print, ink usage and costs, labour costs and depreciation, the total printing cost per square metre on the Onset are 71p. In comparison, on its offset press (for which depreciation wasn’t factored in as this was considered money already spent), the total printing cost was far greater. This meant that on an average run of 450 the actual saving was £823.50.
Printer X decided to invest and used the Onset at its optimum levels, which meant that print was being produced at well over 450m/hr, running 24/7. In this example the payback took six months, resulting in the decision to invest in another Onset.
Over a 24 hour period Printer X saved the following:
£823.50 x 15 jobs = £12,352.50
£12,352 x 5 days = £61,762.50
£61,762.50 x 26 weeks = £1,605,825
Printer Y on the other hand is a smaller customer, for which a different model is applicable. When Fujifilm evaluated this business it became obvious that pre-press and makeready costs for its incumbent screen presses, including consumables and labour costs, were averaging about £456 per job. Taking this into account, the actual total cost of producing a 400 run length job of 60:40 print using the screen presses was £1,538. By investing in an Onset, this was reduced by £2.20 per sheet, or £880 per job.
Based on a 12 hour day with jobs of this run length taking approximately 1.78 hours to produce (the Onset does not run for every minute of the day), Printer Y calculated that it could save the following:
£880 x 6 jobs = £5,280
£5,280 x 5 days = £26,400
£26,400 x 28 weeks = £739,200
A saving of £739,200 was made simply by transferring existing low value analogue work to the Onset, which meant that the machine itself was paid for in this timeframe. However, by also factoring in the benefits of being able to produce high quality and high value short run work, as well as reducing the outlay on pre-press and labour, the payback dropped to below six months.
Experiences such as these prompted Fujifilm to develop the www.onsetchallenge.com website. This site allows you to enter your own production figures to see how the ROI would work out, and use an online tool to ‘build’ an Onset configuration to suit your own particular requirements.