The certification for the BPIF’s ISO colour quality management scheme was issued by Print & Media Certification (PMC) and awarded to Ricoh’s products at its Customer Experience Centre (CEC), Telford, at the end of November.
The scope of the accreditation, which is for the ISO 12647-2:2013 standard, covers Ricoh’s digital-toner based products and continuous inkjet products and it takes in all of the ISO 12647 print standards, production methods and pre-press processes.
Product testing was performed on Ricoh’s Pro VC60000 and Pro C7100sx, selected as they are the most “recent and representative technologies used in the CEC,” according to Ricoh colour champion Jason Dale.
Dale said: “Being able to print reliable colour, consistently, is a big driver for print service providers and hopefully this gives them even more confidence in our toner and inkjet technologies.
“An aim for most digital vendors is to convince the offset world to shift their low volume work to digital and in the past this has been challenging but our digital technologies are capable of emulating the quality and colour consistency of offset as this independently verified certificate demonstrates.
“I can't comment on whether others will follow our lead. It's important for us to have a strong colour quality management system in place for our internal print business, I don't see this as a short-term thing.”
ISO 12647-2:2013 specifies process parameters and their values to be applied when producing colour separations, printing forms and print production for four-colour sheetfed and web-fed offset printing presses.
It is also applicable to printing on cardboard material for packaging and also for drying methods such as heat-set, infrared and ultraviolet.
PMC certification manager Jon Stack said that he was “delighted” to have issued the certification.
“The current version of the BPIF ISO 12647 certification scheme now gives the opportunity to all printers, including digital, lithographic and flexographic, as well as suppliers of reprographics,” he said.
He added that the scheme is a bolt-on to ISO 9001 requirements and that it can easily be integrated into an existing 9001 system.
Last November, Ricoh launched its Pro 8200S series of mono digital printers as direct replacements for its 8100 series. It also showed its new desktop DGT printer for the first time in August, showing its AnaJet mPower mP10i desktop device as part of a technology showcase at the Ricoh Women’s British Open golf championship held at Woburn.
