For the last ten months my colleague, Mark Fallon, and I have been working with an in-plant to assist their team in right-sizing their print operation. In the utility sector, Salt River Project, (SRP) is a community-based, not-for-profit water and energy company. SRP provides reliable, affordable water and power to more than two million people living in central Arizona.

Many changes were underway at SRP.

With significant growth in 2022, Ontario based book printer Maracle, began their journey to upgrade print capabilities. Their sales grew by 30% and they were unable to accept all the work their clients wanted to print in the 2nd half of the year. Under the new leadership of Alec Couckuyt, they embarked on a solution to replace one of their three digital presses, an older HP Indigo. Who is Maracle?

Maracle is a midsized, privately owned, commercial printer serving Canadian and US customers, running a 2-shift operation

In September of 2020, I spoke with managers running large in-plant print operations — Mike Lincoln, Colorado State Printer and Tammy Golden, Assistant Commissioner of Document Solutions at State of Tennessee. Despite significant differences in print volumes and approaches, both managers expressed the need to assess, adapt and expand their services to meet the changing requirements of their customers.

In-plants continue to face multiple staffing challenges from high absenteeism, large numbers of retirements, and state mandated hiring freezes.

Many new inkjet production presses have been installed across all sectors of the print industry in the last five years. The overriding reason they are installed is because they print faster at a lower overall cost than toner and offset.