Print is not escaping the cost of living crisis. Every printer in the country has had to contend with rising paper prices, wage increases, energy and consumable costs. Most report that they have had some success in passing on price increases and inflation can offer opportunities for those that can buy ahead at one price and sell when prices have increased. This time around inflation has been accompanied by supply chain volatility making it difficult, if not impossible, to always get the paper wanted let alone at the price expected. Tales abound of print sales executives agreeing a price with a client in his office based on the most recent price per tonne for paper only to find that the cost has risen by the time he has returned to the office. Estimating has been turned into a lottery.
Early adopters of Zaikio’s procurement platform can discover whether a grade is in stock without the need to call around, meaning they can at least find and order the paper they need. Currently Premier Paper is on board, with Antalis anticipated to join as has happened in Germany. That can help with checking availability; it is less successful when costs are moving so quickly.
Otherwise paper merchants have recommended switching to less popular grades, weights and formats, sometimes to more expensive papers where there has been greater availability.
The issue has prompted some printers to examine the Cepi profiles for each paper, to try to work out why the price of paper has risen so sharply. They find themselves comparing the energy input per tonne and the energy profile of each paper mill. This raises questions about the end price – surely papers which have less grid energy input should have lower prices per tonne?
The BPIF has attempted to question mills about this (because it is a manufacturing, not a distribution issue) but has had little success. As with the major energy providers, paper companies have high fixed costs and frequently run at a loss when minimal utilisation is not reached. When demand is high as it is now, prices will strengthen. Sappi, for example, claimed in its Q3 results to be running at full capacity. It has no need to reduce prices. And like the energy giants this can make it appear as if paper companies are gouging the price. But paper producers will have to buy energy at the market rate, regardless of how that energy is created.
In normal circumstances this would not matter greatly. That it comes after Covid and at a time when every other cost is increasing makes the paper companies’ actions all the more painful.
Many printers have responded by buying more paper than normal in order to have stock when customers call. This gives an artificial boost to demand and twists the screw on supply chain constraints just a little more. The risk is that the price of paper falls and the printer is left with stock that was ordered at a higher price than the new normal and the printer then has to decide whether to charge paper at the higher rate or to take the hit. Hedging the costs of paper can be an expensive game, which is why paper merchants exist to do this.
Away from paper, energy is a huge cost that printers can do nothing about, except reduce demand where possible. Many are already doing so though as part of a sustainability journey rather than as a cost saving measure. Motion sensitive switches and LED lighting are now commonplace while more and more printers are generating their own energy with solar panels to at least mitigate part of the cost of electricity. Pay back times for this sort of investment are going to be faster than anticipated.
On top of solar panels, the use of a curtain barrier between the factory and the yard when receiving deliveries of loading vehicles will keep heat in the factory during winter and can help avoid some of the troublesome fluctuations in humidity that printers can experience.
Other printers have perhaps inadvertently reduced their energy bill by switching off machines at the start of Covid lockdowns and have decided to operate with reduced capacity, outsourcing when necessary as the lockdowns have ended.
If they do come back with litho presses, printers should finish the shift to running without IPA in the fount. Most modern presses are designed to do without and it represents a saving for printers that can eliminate its use, while also improving the environment around the press.
Another of the actions which can have a double impact, reducing costs at the same time as improving sustainability, is to switch to using processless plates. It does away with the cost of running a processor; there is no chemistry to handle and dispose of and there is a measurable benefit in water as well as energy consumption. Manson Group has recently announced that a year after deciding to use Kodak’s Sonora plate, it has saved 4,000 litres of water. Given the drought and what will be necessary actions imposed on water companies to prevent a recurrence, water bills are sure to rise.
Kodak believes the benefits are more dramatic and far reaching: “It completely eliminates electricity, water, developer, replenisher and gumming solution, and clean out finisher associated with conventional plate processing. Since there isn’t any chemistry used, and no plate processor in need of cleaning and maintenance, there are also no waste chemicals or contaminated residual liquids to be disposed of. Furthermore, Sonora plates help reduce waste on press.”
The same will be true of Agfa and Fujifilm which offer process free plates, with the same cost and sustainability benefits. A cheaper plate from a fringe provider, perhaps from the Far East, may appear a bargain but can suffer consistency issues and fluctuations in availability. Plates are relatively well safeguarded against inflation as the price of aluminium can be recovered on the recycled metal market. Digital printing technologies exist for those printers for whom plate costs are too much of a burden and this can be a factor for companies now looking at inkjet printing.
Ink optimisation algorithms are far subtler than the global use of UCR/GCR which can lead to quality issues in the printed result. The newer versions of colour software can take this into account while reducing ink consumption, by up to 30% in many instances. There are also gains in on press stability and the amount of energy required to dry the sheet because it is carrying less ink.
Ink film thickness is going to come under increasing scrutiny. Already modern presses have far more efficient IR/hot air dryers than the previous generation of machines. These developments can reduce the energy requirement for drying beyond simply running at a lower temperature setting.
On Koenig & Bauer’s Rapida X, hot air is reused in the same drying operation thanks to a system which recirculates the air. It has claimed that the latest VariDry systems will cut energy required compared to a less sophisticated combination dryer by as much as 50%. Heidelberg’s DryStar technology works in a similar way to reuse hot air to cut overall energy consumption. The DryStar Advance option will also store dryer settings for use on the repeat run or on similar jobs in future.
Komori’s strategy, in response to diktats about energy consumption in Japan in the wake of the Fukushima accident, was H UV, using UV lamps to remove the need for energy demanding hot air dryers. LED UV takes this a step further. Should energy costs remain high, there will be increasing interest in LED. The cost of a retrofitting an LED curing unit and then the additional cost for ink will not matter if energy prices remain in the stratosphere. Certainly pay back periods will be steeply reduced.
It is not simply energy costs that are driving a new round of interest in LED UV. The availability of gas is rapidly becoming an issue for printers in Germany and elsewhere in central Europe. It might be that restrictions in gas use will hit heatset web offset printers hard. Already some companies in print have introduced technology to be able to switch from piped natural gas to onsite storage of liquid natural gas if this becomes necessary.
Flint Ink has developed a coldset ink with some of characteristics of a heatset ink. The Kyroset ink will run on a heatset web press, will deliver the gloss levels associated with heatset web printing and naturally has no need for a lengthy gas oven. It was initially developed for the retail flyer market so that printers could help reduce the carbon impact of printing this type of advertising material, says Tony Lord, president of Flint’s commercial and publication web division. “However, with the devastating impact of global gas pricing which shows no sign of abating, we accelerated the development programme and are now able to produce Kyroset.
Production results have confirmed on various popular substrates that Kyroset is able to provide high quality print with a significantly reduced or totally eliminated drying process, thereby significantly enhancing print economics during this volatile inflationary period,” he says. “The key to this development is the relationship between the ink, fount and substrate but recognising the prevailing shortages with paper supply to the industry we have consciously developed Kryoset with a wide utilisation bandwidth to ensure optimal performance with those substrates that are commercially available today.”
The ink has been in field testing where reports claim it is effective, though some additional hot air/IR drying can be necessary.
Another option to eliminate the need for the web offset oven is to use LED UV inks. Komori developed this in Japan and has announced Triangl in the Czech Republic as its first European customer for a G38 16pp web press with LED UV. The motivation for the investment, decided before prices began to rocket, had been to increase capacity compared to a sheetfed press, coming off in folded sections to eliminate a production step, and to print at 30,000 B1 sheets an hour. The use of UV curing gives an identical look and feel to print from a sheetfed press.
This technology will shortly arrive in the UK, again with eliminating a production step and increasing capacity with no reduction in output quality as the key aim. According to Komori, the UV cured ink is stable on press even at 30,000sph. That the end to end measurement of the press of 20 metres is another factor in its favour.
Sun Chemical has supplied ink to Triangl with success as well as supplying other web printers with LED UV inks. Many of the former business forms presses, narrow web and running blanket to steel, have used UV inks for many years. Using LED UV is a further step forwards.
Triangl’s owner Petr Kotynek says: “During an economically challenging time we made the decision to invest in a game changing press by Komori. The fully autonomous rotary press is currently the only press of its kind in Europe and America. Equipped with an inline folder, folding sheets during the same run is something that is incomparable to older rotary presses. When I look at our current production capabilities and goals, it’s impossible to imagine not having a press equipped with an inline folder system. It is the full process that is truly making the difference.”
The extent to which other heatset web printers will consider a move away from what they know is debatable. What is more likely is adoption by a commercial printer wanting a faster production platform than a long perfecting B1 press with the addition of inline folding to increase velocity of a job and remove the labour associated with running an offline folder. Quality is more akin to a conventional sheetfed press than a heatset web where pages can show the effects of the high temperature dryer.
A used machine is another option. There is an M600 16pp web offset press in Mauritius in need of a home. It has always operated with UV as there is no gas supply on the island. Contact John Ellis at Manroland Goss for details.
These are longer term propositions as is investment in MIS and software to optimise paper and plate usage through job ganging, or moving to less expensive presses if ganging is not already available.
The retrofit of an LED UV unit to a conventional sheetfed press may prove a wise investment over time, particularly if handling a lot of uncoated work. Expect to pay around £100,000 for a B1 end of press system.
There is a gap between the conventional ink used on an uncoated sheet and how much UV ink is used. With one the ink is absorbed into the paper, with the other the ink is cured on the surface. This will offset the extra cost of a UV ink, at least for work that is needed quickly where the second advantage of UV, that work is dry and can be processed immediately, can be valuable. This is literally so because if the job does not have to sit waiting for sheets to dry before finishing and delivery, invoicing can happen faster.
On the other hand, if it is print for a call off stock or for where turnaround is not important, oxidising inks can be most cost effective. More and more carton printers are using conventional rather than UV inks for just this reason, says Hubergroup UK’s Trevor Amps.
They can print with a conventional ink under an aqueous coating as a seal where the ink will harden over time while the cartons sit in a warehouse waiting to be called off. It can prove cost effective to work in this way.
And it is not only carton printers that are changing inks. “In the past people used just one ink for every job whatever the substrate. But post Covid we have seen people using a low cost ink when appropriate. Previously that was not convenient and not worth the effort,” says Amps. “Now it’s easier to batch different types of job, the less quality sensitive jobs on a lower grade of paper and where there is less margin, for example.”
Scheduling applications makes it easier to group job types together and automatic wash up programmes on press can make it easier to wash up one ink to run with another, if not several times a day. Huber has noticed customers continue to buy the high end ink while also asking for what Amps calls “our Price Buster ink”.
There is some interest in LED UV he says, but the upfront capital cost is proving a barrier to investment. However, if a printer has his finger on all his costs, including energy, and can calculate a cost per sheet, especially where energy can be a variable, the equation can change. LED UV is not yet the answer to all a printer’s problems – varnish is still a potential problem because of the limited photo initiators that are available to use. This has hindered take up by carton printers with the answer frequently being to run LED inks with conventional UV for varnishes.
Everything is now to play for. “Ink prices are in focus like everything else,” says Amps, “including what wasn’t worth the hassle before. Now everything is on the table. We have suggested people use different inks for different jobs in the past and they weren’t bothered. Now they are, though not all. Some will still take a hit on margin rather than switch.
“We have been as proactive as we can be. That has included making fewer but larger deliveries, visits, say from ten times a year to once a quarter. This can take the edge off cost increases. We have also made the fuel surcharge a separate line item on the invoice as we try to be as transparent as possible. But unfortunately we can’t do that with energy.”
Sun Chemical can also point to customers that are happy to switch between printing with conventional and with LED UV inks. The printer needs a press set up for UV printing in the first instance and running with hybrid rollers in the second. Ink is the only element that should be changed.
The appeal of LED UV, says Jonathan Sexton at Sun Chemical, is about the ability to compete with digital printing, enabling someone to print and deliver of the same day. “We are getting asked the questions,” he says. Many are coming from web offset printers fearful of the impact of gas prices and concerned about supply to industry in Germany. To date he reckons that there are five to ten web offset printers in Europe running with LED UV. “It’s a handful, “ he says. “Now there’s a lot more interest thanks to the growing energy crisis.”
The company has also supplied LED UV inks to run on coldset web presses at full press speed. The rheology of the ink changes, but essentially it is the same ink as developed to run on heatset webs. “They can get a gloss level to that on the equivalent heatset press using our ink. It depends on the business model and paper quality. There is no sense in printing like this on poor quality paper,” he adds.
Ink accounts for 5-10% of the overall cost of a job and it is one that printers can address whereas paper and energy are beyond their reach.
It will be used in cartons too, though the technology remains at the feasibility stage, Sexton adds. “It is going to happen and a couple of large companies in Italy are using LED while the big carton groups are evaluating it. We are sure it will happen and the rise in energy costs will accelerate this. Currently 90-95% of LED UV offset presses are in the commercial market,” he says.
There is work underway to improve oxidising inks so that sheets can be handled shortly after printing to give commercial printers some of the advantages of UV printing but without the capital investment needed. “These inks will reduce the time that a job needs to wait around before further processing. But it will not reduce the energy needed on press. This is where work is going on at the moment.”
It is also going on to improve sustainability through the use of more renewable materials or using recovered materials, an element of recycled plastic in coatings for example. Inks with a big renewable content are being beta tested in France, he says.
There is limited opportunity, he continues, as sheetfed ink is already 80% oil from renewable sources, pointing to what Sun Chemical believes is a bigger challenge than the immediate price rise issues.
Sexton reckons that the coatings issue will be settled in the not too distant future because the photoinitiators and LEDs with the appropriate wavelength will be available thanks to developments in the sterilisation market where diodes are replacing mercury vapour lamps. This may mean lower cost LEDs, but not lower cost inks as raw materials are increasing in price and if China closes down further, accessing some materials may become more challenging. “However, we think the phase of big price hikes is possibly over,” says Sexton. “And if there is a recession, reduction in demand could lead to softening of prices. We are seeing this in Asia now.”
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