Simple Life Packaging

For Jeffery Song and his partners at Simple Life Packaging, a brilliant idea for a new business came from friends who owned cafes. They wanted to promote their businesses with disposable coffee cups sporting their logos, but the economics of doing that were prohibitive.

Jeffery found that having disposable coffee cups printed overseas and shipped here was too expensive. Minimum order sizes and turnaround times made the idea unviable, but then he hit on an idea that turned it all around.

“We started Simple Life Packaging three or four years ago,” he said. “Australians love their coffee, and companies want to promote their business on coffee cups. It’s a great way to have your logo in front of people.

“The minimum order for printing cups overseas is usually 50,000. Most customers say that’s far too many, and the time delay for orders is about two months – too long for customers.

“Clients wanted smaller quantities and a faster turnaround, so we thought we should print coffee cups locally. We tried local offset printers but they charge for offset printing plates regardless of the size of the order,” said Jeffery.

So Simple Life Packaging investigated printing coffee cups digitally and, after a lot of research, ordered a Ricoh Pro C7200 digital printing press, which provided an ideal solution for their business plan.

Very important in Simple Life’s considerations was food safety, so the recent awarding of Ricoh’s toners with a Smithers Pira Certificate of Conformity, assuring EU food packaging legislation compliance, figured significantly in their deliberations.

“We looked at digital printers based on their technology. We found that Ricoh is the only supplier using food safety grade toner, which is very important for packaging. The Ricoh Pro C7200 has also given us the print speed we wanted, and was the only machine that could handle our larger and thicker paper stocks in the input paper tray.”

Simple Life Packaging has obviated the need for overseas printed orders with local turnarounds of two weeks, and can print orders in any number. The company specialises in custom design orders for corporate logos, events and promotions so businesses have an opportunity to promote their services at the office, at exhibitions, conferences and myriad other opportunities as they present themselves.

An Automated Operation

Simple Life Packaging is the first print operation in Australia to use Ricoh’s new TotalFlow print server and workflow. TotalFlow automates scheduling of production print jobs and manual preparation tasks to minimise human interference and bottlenecks.

“The Ricoh Pro C7200’s automation with TotalFlow is great. We can load the machine with paper, and ten minutes later printed sheets can be taken straight from the output tray to the diecutter for folding and gluing. It saves a lot of manual handling and time,” said Jeffery.

“TotalFlow is easy to use, and gives us the ability to see what’s going on with each job. If we have an issue I can talk with Ricoh technicians, who can tell me the problem and fix it.”

A Recycling Solution

Disposable coffee cups have posed a rubbish and landfill problem in the past, but Simple Life Packaging has found a solution by using appropriate materials in their cups. “We use biodegradable and compostable cups, and are now trying compostable and biodegradable bamboo lids, so they are not a rubbish problem,” said Jeffery. “We are always looking for new environmental ideas for our materials.”

Looking Further Afield

Simple Life Packaging has a ready market for coffee cups in the greater Sydney region, and also now supplies customers in Queensland, Western Australia and Melbourne.

“Because of the Ricoh’s print quality and efficiency we can supply higher quality products to our customers,” said Jeffery. “We’re confident that our market will continue to grow with Sydney’s love of coffee!”

AT A GLANCE – RICOH PRO C7200

• Technology – 4-drum dry electrostatic transfer system with internal transfer belt
• Continuous Speed, B&W + 4-colour – 85ppm
• Print/copy Resolution – 1,200dpi
• Max Print Area – 1,252mm x 323mm
• Max Paper Weight – 360gsm
• Media Support – Paper stocks, textured, envelopes, translucent stock Configuration – Modular.