Narrow Web label printing system manufacturer Afinia Label has announced that it has reduced the price of its R635 toner cartridges by 12%, from $227 to $199. The C, M, and Y cartridges are rated at 11,500 page equivalent and the K cartridge is rated at 30,000 page equivalent.

“Our competitive advantage has everything to do with driving down the cost of equipment ownership,” says Mike Atkins, Afinia Label’s national sales manager. “The market has responded and, because of that, we have achieved economies of scale that allow us to make in-house label printing even more affordable by reducing our toner prices.”

The Afinia Label R635 is a single-pass, 4-color, LED-based, low-temperature laser printer that runs at 30 feet per minute. Designed for mid-range and industrial printing, the R635 offers cost-savings by bringing label printing in-house. In addition to printing prime labels for industries like coffee, wine and specialty foods, the R635 is used by many companies for private labeling of chemicals because of its ability to create output that meets GHS and BS 5609 requirements.

“When people consider a $3,000 label printer they sometimes ignore the total cost of ownership,” Atkins says. “If you are printing 10,000 labels per month on one of those printers, its total cost will equal that of a $14,995 R635 in six months. That’s a real eye-opener for prospective Afinia Label clients. Things get expensive, really fast as the monthly label volume exceeds 10,000. We’ve seen instances where the $3,000 printer costs so much to run during the first year that the customer could have bought an R635 with the ink cost savings.”

In 2012, Afinia Label partnered with Memjet to create a commercially viable narrow web label printing system. Afinia Label is now one of the largest distributors of Memjet-based label printers in the world.