Page 34 - Print 21 Magazine Sep-Oct 2018

Print events
Jake Nelson
Ricoh bringing customer engagement to life
Some 40 Australian printers jetted up to the Ricoh Alive with Colour event, held at the regional Customer Experience Centre in Thailand, to get the latest updates on the company's developments, and see for
Ricoh’s commitment to its customers. “What is important to us is having profitable, productive, and happy customers,” he says. “This event is
for our customers to understand us and what we do, but it is also about
significant processing speed, and it has built-in capabilities to ensure consistent high-quality registration.”
As we approach the wide-format section, the Pro T7210 flatbed is printing on a 35mm wooden door.
It is an unusual entry in the flatbed space in that it is designed not for signage, but for décor, explains Paul Thompson, business development manager for direct to garment and visual display solutions at Ricoh.
He says, “We are able to target that market due to a couple of factors:
the ink we manufacture for it is high-adhesion, with the ability to be applied to a wide range of substrates. The machine also has inline priming capabilities, which opens up products such as glass, aluminium and steel without the need for pre-treatment.
“It can print a wide range of applications on a wide range of materials at high speed, 100 square metres per hour, using substrates up to 110 millimetres thick,” he says.
The Pro T7210 is not a niche product however; customers have told Ricoh that the machine works well as a signage printer that can also produce décor. “We have been running tests with materials such as corflute, and had some fantastic results,” says Thompson.
Also on display in the wide-format section are prototypes of Ricoh’s upcoming entry into the roll-to-roll space; the Pro L5160 latex printer, slated for release early next year.
As with its other devices, Ricoh is manufacturing the complete package, including inks, print heads and the machine itself. “We are managing the whole process,” saysThompson.
The L5160 runs at a low temperature, opening it up to heat-sensitive stock. “There is also built-in maintenance,” adds Thompson. “It has self-cleaning tools that increase the uptime, minimises the impact on staff, and enables more product out per hour.”
themselves the scale of the operation, reports Print21’s Jake Nelson from the land of smiles.
Ricoh’s regional customer experience centre (CEC) is just a part of its massive Rayong production plant, which spans 120,000sqm and employs almost 4000 workers,
in lush surrounds an hour from the famous beach resort city of Pattaya.
The air-conditioned interior is a welcome relief from the sticky heat of the rainy season outside, for me and for the rest of the 40 Australian guests and staff who have come to tour the facility – the largest group to have visited the CEC since it opened in 2016.
The Australian visit is part of an event dubbed Alive with Colour, where Ricoh has flown both existing and potential clients out to Thailand to show them the CEC and the kit on display inside.
According to Simon Lane, national manager for commercial and industrial print at Ricoh Australia, Alive with Colour demonstrates
helping us understand them and what they want.”
For Ricoh, the CEC is an opportunity to connect with customers and show off its broad range of hardware and software options. “We have a lot of strings to our bow,” says Lane. “We are able to demonstrate technologies from cut-sheet commercial right through
to high-speed inkjet and wide-format, plus a range of workflow tools.
“We didn’t show all the solutions we have available, either. We have many more solutions for sale,” he added. “To be a trusted partner, we need to meet more than one need for our customers.”
At the CEC the Australian party
is taken through the show floor
in groups, moving between each station to get a first-hand look at the solutions on display. For my group, the first cab off the rank is cutsheet commercial, including the toner- based Pro C9200 series digital press.
“The C9200 is a workhorse. It is designed to be highly productive and to provide profitable outcomes for customers,” says Lane. “It can manage a broad range of substrates, it has
Pattaya: the Sanctuary of Truth is one of the most famous features of local skyline.
34 Print21 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018