Printing Costs

If you don’t know your total printing costs you are in good company: about half the organisations who print 10,000 sheets a month don’t know their true printing costs, according to a recent CRN survey. Yet the cost of colour toner costs more, by volume,  than champagne

Your colour ink costs are probably around 5 pence per sheet.  So the total cost, comprising ink, paper, and printer costs could be between 6 and 9 pence per sheet if you use small low-cost printers. If you print photographs, the cost is probably over 20 pence per sheet.

Riso’s ink costs are:

• 1.5 pence/sheet for colour
• 0.4 pence/sheet for black and white;

If you print 8,000 colour sheets per  month, Riso will probably save you £10,000 over 3 years in ink costs alone.

The Total Cost of Printing

To calculate your total printing cost, consider the following factors:

• Monthly Rental Cost: A new Riso printer purchased outright is slightly more expensive that a traditional copier. Over a 3 to 5 year rental agreement, the cost difference is small. One reason is that Riso HC and ComColor printers use advanced ink-jet print-head technology, developed by Cambridge company Xaar, which span-out in 1990 from Cambridge Consultants.  Xaar’s ink-jets use piezo-electric ceramics to rapidly shape the ink-droplet.
• Ink Cost: Thanks to Xaar’s advanced ink-jet technology, Riso’s printers use Riso’s low-cost inks, rather than pricey, toner-based (electro-photographic) cartridges. Riso has been developing inks since 1954, and these inks contributed to the success of Riso’s  two-colour Duplicators.
• Employee Productivity: Most photocopiers print at around 25 to 50 pages per minute. Riso’s printers are fast – between 90 and 150 pages per minute, depending of the model. This is because of Riso’s expertise in moving paper, gained in manufacturing duplicators, and Xaar’s print-head technology.
• Automation: Riso offers a full range of collating, folding, hole-punching, and stapling options.
• Reliability: We generally arrange a service call every 500,000 copies. This means less downtime, and more time devoted to printing.

What this means to your organisation

• Lower Costs: Our combination of monthly rental and lower ink costs saves you money if you print over 8,000 sheets a month. Of course, this depends on your proportion of black and white versus colour, and how much colour is printed on each sheet.
• Higher Productivity:  At £25,000 for a 37.5 hour week, with social costs, your employees cost about 30 pence a minute.
  • Our faster print speeds mean your staff spend less time waiting for the copier to finally tackle their job, and less time watching it print.
  • No more manually collating, punching, and folding sheets of paper.