Value added print is a chimera, and the vast majority of those proposing to base a business strategy on it are misguided. What a customer wants is print that is fit for purpose and which is delivered on time and at the right price. To achieve this a printer should strive for maximum efficiency, the maximum use of assets and to have the lowest costs.

In short he should aim to become a commodity printer.
Outside a very few jobs, most print is used for a short while and then (hopefully) recycled. Much direct mail is never opened; newspapers are ephemera immediately, paperback books may last a couple of years, cased-in books perhaps longer. It means that a piece of print is rarely meant to last. It is a commodity, to be consumed or to do a job for a short while. Printers produce commodities. Only commodity is a loaded word and few companies willingly associate themselves with commodity.

If this were not the case there would be a group of printers who would be able to charge high prices, earn high margins and be producing work of a status that nobody else can attain, rather like certain restaurants always have a lengthy waiting list. However, this is not the case. Print buyers will remain loyal to a supplier providing service, price and quality are right because it can be too arduous to move. A case of better the devil you know. But while this permits a small premium on price to counter the inconvenience of moving, it is only a small premium. This is an over supplied market and print is bought like a commodity.

This is to a large extent the result of market over capacity, which can be blamed on increasing technical efficiency, the ease of obtaining credit in the recent past and unrealistic expectations from print companies that they will be able to fill whatever capacity they have.

One of the problems that the recession is now exposing is that many printers have invested in the wrong type of machinery because they convinced themselves they could offer a so-called value added service that would separate them from a lower class of commodity printers. Today it is the commodity printers with the lowest overheads and slickest production processes that are surviving and those with presses able to add value that are suffering.

The technology to drive production costs down exists: Heidelberg’s Anicolor is aimed at cutting make readies to a minimum; KBA’s Flying Plate Change system aims to eliminate them altogether. The one has a number of UK users, the other should be in this country early next year.

However, to an extent suppliers to the industry must share the blame for creating the idea that added value print is the way forward. Many have argued that to be able to offer a little more than the competition a printer should have a fifth colour unit or a coating unit or both. That extra unit can be used for a house colour or especially for a seal so that work can be processed more quickly. But how often is this necessary, or if it is, how often can be it costed into the job?

If the printer can sell the idea of a seal to protect the print or produce a tangible effect then all well and good. But isn’t it normally the case that the added value represented by the seal is given away? If so a printer with a five-unit press competing against a printer with a four-unit press is immediately carrying an extra cost without any gain.

This becomes even more acute with perfecting presses where there are two additional units over a printer that is not sealing a job. Nor is it necessary. More than 80% of the ten-unit B2 presses sold in the world have gone to UK printers. Is this because printers elsewhere are producing work that is heavily marked, or because printers have talked themselves into over-specifying a machine.

There will, of course, be instances where the extra unit is valuable for the special colour and some printers will have a profile of work which demands this, but few printers will have to start folding sheets immediately they come off the press to meet a deadline. Even a magazine printer like Buxton Press, whose business strategy is truly award-winning, runs eight-unit perfectors. It does not need the extra assurance, and expense of a fifth print to seal.

Some of the thinking can be traced back to the inclination to load a sheet with ink to achieve density levels and colours which has an impact on drying times. This is surely no longer necessary. Paper quality is significantly better than in the past, as are ink controls and following the ISO 12647-2 standard leads the way to achieving consistent density and quality with minimal layers of ink. Less ink on a sheet means there is less of a drying issue as well as a financial saving.

There are other benefits to working to a standardised procedures like this. A job can be produced on any press, prepress and proofing becomes simpler and as a result fewer adjustments need to be made to a job. Make readies will always take the same time and running speeds can be consistent, especially where a printer directs his customer towards one or two standard house sheets which can be bought at a massive discount because of the bulk used and the price advantage shared. The printer thinking like this is adopting a manufacturing outlook, where commodity is not the poor relation, but the king.