Contracts with Colorful Capabilities

Adding up the benefits

The benefits of in-house ink labs are clear. A capable person in the ink room, using up-to-date technology and mixing bases to make just enough of the right ink when it's needed, eliminates delivery time and reduces inventory, saving the converter money over the long run.

Surplus ink inventory is a problem all printers deal with. Too often, when buying readymade ink from a supplier, print shops order too much of a color that is used for one specific job. Once the job is run, the ink has to be stored. On-site inking facilities equipped with a dispenser allow the converter to work off that surplus ink. "Using the rework feature on a dispenser creates useful ink from ink inventory resources that have no current productive use," Matthiesen explained. "After time, that capability reduces the inventory of work-off ink because you are making just enough ink to do the job and there is no ink to rework. That's very valuable."