Another Industry Acquisition

CEOs from China, UK, USA, Mexico, Australia and European Union spoke frankly about industry issues

Probably the biggest merger to face the print consumables industry this year was the one between North American giants Clover and MSE.

Now comes the news that another giant cartridge remanufacturer, the Phoenix based LMI Solutions with a plant also in Mexico has acquired two other businesses. But this time, the two companies acquired are remanufacturers of printers, and not cartridges. LMI first purchased Global Printer Services based in Wisconscin. And now they have purchased the Atlanta based Printers Direct.

The former boss of Printers Direct, Christian Pepper, has joined the new LMI Solutions team. Pepper says LMI is now able to offer a complete end to end strategy. This means consumers can now use top quality remanufactured printers as well as remanufactured cartridges.

Pepper told Recycling Times, “Merger and acquisition activity is normal in the mature markets, especially one that is expanding, like the print industry. It’s logical way for businesses to gain market share and grow the return for shareholders. However, in cases where large businesses in the market consolidate, it’s inevitable that downstream some customers find their supply choice become somewhat limited. However, at LMI, we view recent M&A activity as an opportunity, because we believe customers will seek out news partners like us to broaden their supply base.”

LMI has a unique model where customers, particularly those on managed print services, can be using a nice clean, fully remanufactured printer as well as the cartridges. And it can use genuine OEM parts in the printers you remanufacture too.

Pepper adds, “We do use genuine parts. Unlike remanufacturing cartridge, remanufacturing a printer is actually a process where the OEMs have created an entire service channel that provides all the parts we need to remanufacture their devices. However, the main benefit of remanufactured hardware could be explained by thinking about what we believe is the biggest limiting factor upon aftermarket share growth. And that’s by definition, every few years we lose every customer we supply because he purchases a brand new printer that we don’t have an aftermarket alternative for a period of time. So, by taking control of hardware and offering our customers high quality, affordable and sustainable alternative to new printer, we can break the OEMs’ business model, keep our customers within our aftermarket and allow them to achieve higher growth profit.”

CEOs from China, UK, USA, Mexico, Australia and European Union spoke frankly about industry issues

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