MOS at the threshold of book world

Book printing holds a little share of the big activities at Mail Order Solutions (MOS) India Pvt Ltd. But the recent adoption of RICOH IP 5000 has triggered this Mumbai-based commercial printing conglomerate to make their book production more at ease. Mehul A Desai, founder & chairman of MOS updates Print & Publishing what they foresee ahead. In the current roster of clients whom Rs 120 crore MOS has been serving are just a few but renowned book publishers from India and overseas. “Since our client base has extensively been covering the domestic, European and North American markets, we have been associated with some of the reputed international book publishers,” mentions Mehul. “A renowned French publisher of non-fiction books has been in contact with us since a long time. We still express desire to continue relationship with them as a printer of their internationally acclaimed books at our facility.” On an average, MOS prints a couple of book titles every month with print run ranging from 7,500 to 15,000 copies.

Mehul A Desai (R) with Anjana Saha, national business & marketing manager, Ricoh IndiaOn selection of RICOH IP 5000, Mehul states that MOS has very stringent turnaround times, “Right from the hour we get the art/ digital files from our clients it is required to make sure that final outputs are ready on the stipulated times. So, our first consideration was the need of a machine that could reduce turnaround times. Secondly, we were in search for a machine with a perfect combination of speed and volume that we impeccably found both the features in RICOH IP 5000,” remarks Mehul. Volume that RICOH IP 5000 could cater is a major concern for MOS while dealing hundreds of thousands of direct marketing personalised communications. “In each case, there are jobs of bar coding and others to be incorporated and RICOH IP 5000 is the right machine for that,” he mentions.

RICOH IP 5000“We always prefer to use RICOH IP 5000 for our book printing task. However, depending on the schedules or how much works have been loaded on the IP machine, a little help from offset machines always make a good sense when we concern turnaround times and cumbersome volume of work for a particular job,” says Mehul. With recommendations from RICOH on selection of post-press equipments, MOS has equipped with Hunkeler winder and slitter, which is capable to slit at a very high speed and make stacks (book blocks) in pre-arranged sequences.

‘Pricing’ plays a pivotal role in the current book printing market of India. Agreeing to this fact, Mehul observes that paperback books at prices as low as Rs 75 to Rs 95, which were of Rs 200 to Rs 250 earlier, are now floating up to lend new boost to the market. Behind such aggressive progression in the book printing market is the rapid advent of sophisticated machines like RICOH IP 5000. “India is one of the largest printers of educational books, I believe that the industry is doing well now and it will sustain for a long time and we are looking ahead in grabbing this opportunity in bigger dimensions,” he asserts.

MOS also finds RICOH IP 5000 perfect for variable data printing as this inkjet machine delivers faster turnaround times and multiple features are being integrated on it. “Earlier what we did with offset machines for variable data printing was setting the process separately. Today RICOH IP 5000 has bridged all such lengthy process and this machine can integrate both colour and variable parts on one platform,” explains Mehul. He further mentions that in order to support the RICOH IP 5000, they have set up a complete production line, so that the released rolls can be loaded on the slitter for slitting and stacking, which in turn are stacked as sheets and loaded into CMC machines for folding and ready packaging. Though future expansion plan for branches in other parts of country is not in the schedule, MOS is always in continuous pursuit for new machines and technologies to magnify their production volume and versatility.