HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO PAY $2 MILLION FOR A NEW PRINTER?
Sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it? And that’s just the beginning of being in the commercial printing field.
To start, you need several thousand square feet of production space because the printing and related equipment you have is BIG, really BIG. And it can’t be any space other than on the first level because the BIG equipment is really HEAVY. You’ll have to spend at least $20,000 to reinforce the concrete floor in order to sustain the weight of the big presses. You’ll have to spend over $30,000 for installment of the electric requirements for each piece of equipment. The installation of a new press costs about $100,000 – and that’s just for one press!
And you can’t have just one press because if it goes down, you need to have redundancy because you need to keep clients happy with your turnaround. So now you’re talking two, $2 million printing presses and two $100,000 installation costs! Whew!
Just replacing one set of 20 ink rollers on a $2 million commercial press is $2,500. One set of 20 rollers represents one ink unit. So if you have a 6 color press and you have to replace each of the 6 ink units twice a year, that’s $30,000.
But you have to get the files to the presses so you need to buy a Direct-to-Plate Platesetter which is $150,000. And, you have to have equipment to finish the jobs once the files are printed. Like a saddlestitcher ($250,000), or an automatic folder ($75,000) or an inkjet and wafer sealer ($100,000) for starters.
As you see, being in the commercial printing business is not inexpensive. It’s a custom manufacturing industry, after all. But it’s worth it all, isn’t it? Because the results from full color commercial printing are downright, outrageously beautiful!
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