![]() Remanufacturers have grabbed a third of UK sales, at the same time as counterfeit cartridges from China are flooding into the country. There is an intense battle between manufacturers (HP, Epson and Canon) and "remanufacturers", represented by Brooks, who refill cartridges to sell at a discount. The consumer is paying far more pro-rata today than a decade ago for cartridges containing very little ink." Many cartridges cost less than 50p to make. "The cost of printer ink is the lowest it's ever been, a few euros for a litre. "But these improvements cannot justify a five-fold decrease in the amount of ink in a cartridge," Brooks says. The company has also introduced standard and XL cartridges.Ĭritics accept there have been improvements in technology and modern print heads are more efficient. Its recent PGI-525BK inkjet cartridge, for example, contains 19ml of ink compared with its 26ml BCI-3BK issued in 2005. Of the leading manufacturers, Canon has been the least aggressive in its ink reduction, but volumes have still shrunk. "They are able to produce a greater number of pages with an equivalent amount of ink," the company said in a statement. It claims that on its Officejet Pro models, ink costs on a per-page basis have been maintained at the same levels since 2009.Įpson, meanwhile, argues that print heads are more efficient compared with 10 years ago because of advances in technology. It says consumers should focus on the cost per page of printing. "Focusing on any single factor such as the point of purchase, the up-front cost of the cartridge or printer, the cost per page, or the millilitres of ink in a given cartridge is not an accurate way to measure the cost of printing," HP said in a statement. The printer companies dispute that they are squeezing consumers to ramp up profits. The difference in manufacturing costs is pennies. ![]() XL cartridges are an "insult" to the consumer, says Patrick Stead of cartridge recycler Environmental Business Products: "HP sells half-full cartridges, then sticks an 'XL' on, fills them up, and sells them for even more money. Indeed, some makers' "XL" cartridges may contain less ink than standard cartridges issued a few years ago. It also makes the HP300XL, which has more ink – about 16ml – and sells for around £20-£25. For example, HP makes the HP300, which contains 5ml of black ink and sells for about £13. The shrinking amount of ink in cartridges has enabled manufacturers to offer a remarkable new product – called "XL" (extra large) but almost exactly the same size as the standard cartridge. HP300 printer ink cartridge from 2002 (left) and 2010 (right). "We always recommend people buy a printer with a separate cartridge for each colour." "They're very bad value because when one of the three colours runs out the entire cartridge stops working," Dyckhoff says. All three leading players, including Canon, sell single tri-colour cartridges – cyan, magenta and yellow – often with less than 2ml of ink per colour. Worst value, say the experts, are the colour cartridges. "The big printer manufacturers have reduced the amount of ink in a cartridge, encrypted the chip technology, and used aggressive marketing tactics to discourage refills."Ĭhris Brooks, technical director of industry group the UK Cartridge Remanufacturers Association, is more forthright: "The big printer companies do all they can to squeeze ever-increasing amounts of cash out of the poor consumer in exchange for less ink." "The strategy has been to nudge the consumer towards a high frequency of purchases," says David Connett, editor of The Recycler, a trade magazine covering the remanufacturing industry. In Epson cartridges, meanwhile, the ink tank has been systematically reduced in size. The rest of the cartridge is now simply empty space. The size of the sponges inside, which hold the ink, have progressively reduced over the years. Today, the standard printer cartridges made by HP may contain as little as 5ml of ink but sell for about £13.Ĭut open a HP inkjet cartridge and you'll find what is going on. A decade ago, the best-selling HP cartridge had 42ml of ink and sold for about £20. It's a similar story with Hewlett Packard (HP) cartridges. But the T032 contains 16ml of ink and the T089 contains just 3.5ml of ink. "The amount can be minuscule."įor example, the Epson T032 colour cartridge (released in 2002) is the same size as the Epson colour T089 (released in 2008). "Newer cartridges contain a fraction of the ink a similar product contained a decade ago," Dyckhoff says. Less well-known is the fact that the amount of ink in the average cartridge has shrunk dramatically. The sky-high price of printer ink – measure for measure more expensive than vintage champagne – has been well documented.
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