Stinky Ink News

In conjunction with its second-quarter earnings announcement on Tuesday, Lexmark International said it will close another of its inkjet cartridge-manufacturing plants in Mexico.

The move, which will cost the company about $24 million before taxes, will affect about 650 jobs. The company estimates most of the jobs at the Chihuahua, Mexico, plant will be moved to a lower-cost country. The company continues to operate a plant in Juarez, Mexico, where it closed one of two plants last year. It also has a plant in Lapu-Lapu City in the Philippines.

The closure is expected to save the company about $9 million annually beginning in 2009.

The goal is to improve the company’s struggling inkjet division, which has dragged on the health of the company since the latter half of 2005 and continues to weigh down earnings, as evidenced in Tuesday’s announcement.

Earnings for the second quarter included a 6 percent revenue drop but exceeded analysts’ expectations. That revenue drop was linked to the inkjet division, which sold 49 percent fewer printers in the quarter than in the same period a year earlier.

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We often get people enquiring whether we stock the Lexmark No 2 Tri Colour ink cartridge, but unfortunately we can’t actually buy them from our suppliers because they go into a range of printers that are only available through Dixons Stores Group (DSG) which include PC-World, Dixons, Currys and PCWorld.com, and due to the deal that Lexmark have with DSG we are not allowed to sell the ink cartridges for that printer.

This cartridge goes into the following Lexmark (Exclusive to DSG) printers:

• Z738
• Z1380
• Z1480
• X2480
• X2580
• X3480
• X3580
• X4580

However, we have just taken supplies of refilled No 2 cartridges and now have them available in stock.  The refilled cartridge is only £13.49 including VAT and FREE First class post delivery compared to the Lexmark original on the PCWorld website which is £17.99 + £4.95 standard delivery (whatever that means) which is an eye watering total of £22.94 - which makes us NINE quid cheaper!!!

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Unusually these days, when it seems that Boardroom Emoluments are unaffected by the performance of the company for which that Boardroom is responsible, Lexmark executives have had their Bonuses slashed, reflecting the fall in the companies share price over the past 12 months.

In a Proxy statement released by the company this week, it revealed that the board cut an annual incentive bonus last year to CEO Paul Curlander because of the poor performance of the companies inkjet division.  Since 2005 the company has slashed the workforce, closed factories around the world and concentrated their efforts on people who print more.

Overall, Curlander’s pay dropped more than 18 percent compared with 2006, whilst the other top executives (except for the Chief Financial Officer) saw pay drop too.  He still trousered the top side of $1Million so there is no need to shed tears for him just yet!.

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Lexmark announced this week that it was rationalizing it’s printer and inkjet manufacturing division with 1,650 job losses worldwide which equates to 11% of its workforce. The plan is focused on the struggling inkjet division which reported losses of $16M for Q3, a reduction in operating revenue of 13% and saw its number of printers sold drop by 14%. These numbers will probably continue to fall over the next year because of an announced plan to withdraw from 30% of the companies inkjet sales over the next year. This on top of the 20% withdrawal announced in January 2006 that was coupled with a restructuring which saw the closure of the companies Scottish Factory in Rosyth. It aims to dramatically reshape the division by the end of 2008.

One of the companies two ink cartridge manufacturing plants in Jutrez, Mexico will close.

Lexmark’s moves are an attempt to stop selling printers to people who don’t print enough!. To find those target users, Lexmark will tailor its marketing and sales to countries where customers print the most. Besides the United States, the company wouldn’t name those nations!. Good Luck there then – and remember it’s your duty to print more to keep Lexmark in business

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Lexmark have just launched three more wireless network devices, adding the the products already launched earlier this year they are a clear indication of how Lexmark sees the market going, with Wireless networking taking over from both USB and bluetooth in the course of time.

The X6570 uses Lexmarks latest smudge proof ink technology and provides an all in one solution for printing/copying/scanning and faxing, along with wireless network connection

The X4850 provides photo quality output by adding a third photo cartridge to the existing ink lineup and

The X7550 is the top end product offering print speeds up to 30ppm in mono and pitched at around £169.99 (argos uk)

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