Like any other business the printing industry is vulnerable to eroding margins in the current economic climate as costs continue to rise partly because of the 2008 recession, increasing commodity price speculation on materials like minerals and also because of the unrest across North Africa and the Middle East that is affecting oil prices.
One of the biggest costs that all businesses face, and particularly printing, is the energy costs of running power-hungry printers, copiers and ancillary equipment.
For the professional printer these can include equipment like dryers and coolers.
Equally many of the bigger machines like wide-angle printers may require minimum levels of power supply to run the printers at maximum efficiency.
Since the start of 2011 electricity costs have risen between 7% and 9% and that can be a significant addition to the overheads of a printing business and for any business that needs to use printer/copiers frequently.
There are measures a business can take to keep energy costs under control including assessing the average power costs per 1,000 sheets and reducing use or over-use of driers.
A further longer term investment that could help bring down energy use costs is investing in a system that can manage power supply by optimising the difference between the voltage received and the voltage required by equipment as well as eliminating spikes in supply from the grid.
This can reduce power consumption by up to 12%.
The next and most obvious cost to consider is paper purchase, but there is another side to this, which is cutting back on waste, something that most printers will be well familiar with since papers is an almost totally recyclable material.
There may, however, also be ways that companies can generate some income from their waste that can then be used to reduce overheads.
Although health and safety and environmental regulations mean that any dangerous or toxic chemical waste has to be disposed of safely under the COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) another significant cost on a business is the charges incurred for disposal of waste at a landfill site.
The cost per tonne is due to increase by £8, from £48 per tonne to £56 per tonne for inert waste from April 1.
This would equate to an annual increase of £13,000 per annum in waste disposal costs for a company sending five tonnes of waste to landfill a week.
By April 2014 landfill cost is expected to be not less than £80 per tonne.
Setting up a waste management system that can look at not only quantities of waste but also the potential for earning some income from it may also be helpful for cost control also.
All in all, therefore, if a business wants to keep control of its cash flow and its overheads in difficult trading conditions when the expectation is that costs in an increasingly global economy are likely to keep rising, looking in detail at every aspect of energy consumption and waste makes sound economic sense.