Trends and Opportunities in Latin America’s Printer Consumables Industry

At Conference@2013, Ivan Rosales, former President of the South American Recycled Consumables Industry Association, spoke about the trends and opportunities that exist for the printer consumables industry in the Latin American Region (LAR). In his speech, Mr. Rosales pointed out that in Latin America, which includes an extension of two thirds of the American continent, HP, Xerox, Samsung, Epson and Kyocera are the top five OEMs.

As summarized by Rosales, the LAR market for remanufactured toner and ink cartridges, which always follows in the footsteps of the U.S. and European markets, is impacted by three competitive factors: infringing cartridges (on a large scale); unfair competition from cartridge refillers who produce counterfeits and sell them at a much lower price than that of remanufactured ones; and defamation of remans by OEM advertising.

In spite of these frustrating facts, said Rosales, “customers and users are beginning to turn to recycled cartridges due to the poor quality of clones and counterfeits.” They still want to buy low-cost cartridges but also seek high quality. That is why they are looking at the remanufactured ones. Moreover, under gloomy economic conditions, consumers need to lower printing costs, which recycled cartridges can guarantee. Therefore, Rosales still sees great opportunities in the LAR market for the following products and services:

• Cartridge remanufacturers offering high-quality cartridges and value-added services.

• Businesses that offer Managed Print Services (MPS) with remanufactured cartridges.

•  Cartridges and inkjet printing services like wide-format printing, printing on promotional items, printing on road signs and the entire new range of inkjet printing applications.

•  Suppliers of raw materials for remanufacturers.

•  Suppliers of high quality paper and film substrates.

•  Packaging providers for remanufactured cartridges (boxes, inflatable bags, tags, etc.)

•  Suppliers of printer parts.

In his closing remarks, Rosales bragged that LAR now offers the greatest growth trend in the printing aftermarket and called upon companies worldwide to bring their technology, brands and resources to this golden region.