Ink cost in a railroad tank car.

[Some Guy]

While watching a bunch of railroad tank cars go by, I noticed the capacity at 23,000 gallons on the side of some.

There is an ink manufacturing plant on the siding they come out of (Used to be called "Champion" and now the sign is down and gone.) which seems mostly black ink spilled around the place as it it in oil country and on the cars.  I don't know where they go to, probably on to some outfit who puts them into drums, finesses the fluid a bit more (Filters. Encapsulates. Etc.), on to other countries(??), and then to someone who puts it into cartridges for magazines, newspapers, and print shops (inkjet sellers?).

Anyway, if Epson or Canon is getting about $1 per milliliter at store prices for a cart, that's about $87 million (Versaverter says:  8.7064e+7mL) per tank car if my math is right.  So maybe 12 tank cars would amount to a billion dollars?!!  Lots of markup in that stuff along the way!  Would be interesting to know what a tankcar of raw ink actually costs the plant to make and what they sell it for.  No doubt classified to the max unless you are a buyer.

SG

[SanderKikkert]

My guess is that it's heatset printing ink, or perhaps newpaper ink in those amounts, I work for one of the largest printing-ink companies in the world (Flint Group), and no...we don't produce the ink that's in those cartridges 

It's the ink used in those gigantic offset presses (CMYK system), the rolls of paper they use are usually also about one truckload per roll (try fitting that onto your A2+ Epson...)
Some of our bigger clients get their inks delivered this way, or we supply sisterplants who refill in 1000 kg containers for end-customers.

Allthough the volumes are gigantic, the price per kg is less impressive...typically about 2-3 dollars per kg.

Cheers, Sander

[Some Guy]

My guess is that it's heatset printing ink, or perhaps newpaper ink in those amounts, I work for one of the largest printing-ink companies in the world (Flint Group), and no...we don't produce the ink that's in those cartridges 

It's the ink used in those gigantic offset presses (CMYK system), the rolls of paper they use are usually also about one truckload per roll (try fitting that onto your A2+ Epson...)
Some of our bigger clients get their inks delivered this way, or we supply sisterplants who refill in 1000 kg containers for end-customers.

Although the volumes are gigantic, the price per kg is less impressive...typically about 2-3 dollars per kg.

Cheers, Sander

It does seem like a lot, but I was guessing maybe a tank car would run about the price of gasoline at say $2/gallon and at 23,000 gallons, maybe $50K per tank car at their cost?

Does seem to ramp up into millions quickly though through the chain to the customer though.  They move a lot of ink and the siding usually has about 20 cars every month on sitting on it.  There is some lumber treatment plant next door that takes some tank cars for whatever they pressure treat their wood with too, but the raw wood goes in and out on flatbed rail cars and the tank cars go out empty.  Lots of tank cars though, and I never really thought about the amount if ink or the raw materials cost in them until I saw the capacity and wondered about their ink going into those huge things.

I'd be curious as where in the chain it takes the steepest price spike?  I would guess Epson or Canon, but there are others in the mix too.  Don't know if the stores get a hefty markup too, double down there maybe?

Still interesting trivia that I never really thought about until I had to wait at the crossing for them to move by:  "Geeze, that's a lot of ink going somewhere."

SG

[Wayne Fox]

yeah, seems like they are making liquid gold,  but the companies financial reports and status really don’t reflect that.  Pigment ink for these printers probably a lot more difficult to make than just ink to use in a news press.

 just glad my printer doesn’t use  scorpion venom, which goes for a cool $9800/ml.

[B-Ark]

I prefer the DIY approach.
How hard can it be to milk a scorpion?

[Jeremy Roussak]

I prefer the DIY approach.
How hard can it be to milk a scorpion?

Depends how much it wants to be milked, I expect.

Jeremy

[AFairley]

I wonder if you could substitute snake venom - more ml per critter, sort of like bigger ink carts.   

[enduser]

I once saw a research paper presented to the British Chemical Institute, (Or similar name), where they had obtained some data about pigment aqueous inks of the types we use.  Using the data and adding factory, distributor and retail margins, and using the cost of empty replacement carts and packaging, my pricing came out with the figure of $23US for a Canon iPF 130 cc cart.

AS a retailer and wholesaler, the margins I used were similar to what my industry experience suggested - fairly typical at about 80% for each step. Anybody else doing the same calcs might get a different result.

[Otto Phocus]

I would think that making a good quality ink is rather expensive and complicated.

[Some Guy]

I was just looking at some Chinese ink makers who make literally hundreds and thousands of gallons of ink per week.  Prices go from $0.10 per liter up to $50 per liter on quantity.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-quality-Pigment-Ink-for-EPSON_669085971.html?spm=a2700.7724838.35.1.3k9bBb&s=p

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/UltraChrome-K3-Pigment-Ink-For-Epson_1760478056.html?spm=a2700.7724838.14.13.3k9bBb&s=p

Most seem to hover around $15/liter for most in small quantities for the Epson Ultrachrome pigment printers.  If Epson can get make it for $0.10 per liter (No doubt they can since they source to other commercial printing machine makers too.), they are making a small fortune to get it up to $1 per ml.  No wonder Alibaba shows over 100,000 ink manufacturers in the East.  Big business, but China has always been big on ink making.

I'm curious if Epson, with their newest ink incantation of inks for the new P-series, is making their ink back home in Japan.  Might be an effort to keep their licensing at home since their claims of longer life and blacker blacks, etc.  I doubt if they will want to leak the manufacturing out knowing it might get copied elsewhere.  The older K3 inks (Not the HD) seems to be readily available now and probably off their patent table by now.  Their long-lasting Claira dye might be getting made elsewhere now by 3rd parties since they don't seem to be pushing it heavily, unless they are still using that ink in the commercial Epsons, Rolands, Noritsu's, Fuji's, etc.  I know on the refill OEM carts for the Noritsu D701, the 500ml ink cart boxes say "Made in Japan" and it is the Epson Claria ink.

SG

[Paul Roark]

B&W photographers can cut the cost of their dilute inks to about 1% of the Epson small cart price if they mix their own.  While top quality carbon pigments are easy for third party sellers to get and sell, the best color pigments are a different matter.

The inkjet printer companies have traditionally used the "Gillette" model (give them the razor, nick them with the blade).  It's interesting that with the EcoTank printers Epson is going to try and move away from this.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Ink-Mixing.pdf

[Peter McLennan]

And always remember:  According to Wired Magazine, inkjet ink is 95% water.
Nice water.  Maybe even distilled water.  But water nonetheless.

[langier]

I figured for my ink consumption in my 9900 using 750ml carts at about $1266 per gallon so your rail tanker car has the potential of roughly retail about $28 million. I just hope it isn't Cyan since that's the color I seem to use the least! 

[Ernst Dinkla]

No third party company so far delivered color ink sets, pigment and dye, that give the same fade resistance in their respective categories. There was a time you could get better fade resistance from third party pigment inks than the OEM dye inks had, but that is more than a decade ago. Mediastreet Generations, MIS 7600 as examples. Faster pigment settling was a real problem with these pigment inks. The black had some dye added for better Dmax. There was even some color deviation between deliveries in our experience.

Since then OEM inks, both pigment and dye, improved considerably in fade resistance, gamut, stability on the printers. I gladly pay the 0,30-0,40 Euro a ML for that quality so I can assure my customers the inks I use are among the best. Give them the link to Aardenburg-Imaging results too. My printers have no issues with the HP inks. It is also nice to know that 90% of ink lands on usable prints and not in the maintenance tank. I am sure the OEM companies make a healthy profit on that ink production, so do I on the prints made with them. I doubt the OEM ink production costs are as low as the Chinese ink producers seem to start from. Sure I check where ink prices are the lowest within the Vivera pigment cartridges category but not beyond.

Alright my officeprinter runs on Vivera pigment MK + PK ink partly diluted with an ink medium to create a quad ink set. For the invoices, letters and so far some special jobs reproducing handwritten A4s. More an experiment that may break even in ink costs on the long run. I have no intentions to do the same for the HP Zs here, not even on the grey inks. Maybe on another thermal inkjet head printer dedicated for B&W prints. Fade resistance and print consistency is more easily kept with PK and MK dilutions than with color ink mixes.

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
December 2014 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots