NCR unit offers recycled laser printer cartridges

NCR, through its agents mostly in Europe and US, collect used cartridges of HP, Canon, Lexmark, IBM, Brother and Epson and distributes them to the company's seven plants across the globe. These used cartridges are then opened and excepting for the outer shell all parts in it are changed and then refilled with powder ink.

Sandeep Gupta, country manager, Systemedia said, "We cannot make the outer shell of other brands, though it would be cheaper if we make them ourselves. That would be infringement of patent held by these original equipment manufacturers. Instead we source these shells from across the globe and reload them with our parts."

Gupta said that HP also has well-organised system to collect its own used shells. "World over they do this to avoid used printer cartridges landing in wrong hands like spurious cartridge manufactures and partly to avoid companies like NCR from picking them up."

Gupta informed that the total market size of laser printer cartridges is around Rs 500 crore in India of which Rs 250 crore is in the organised sector. HP has almost 80 per cent market share in the organised market.

"The rest of the market comes from spurious makes and refills," he said. At present NCR sells around 6,000 compatible cartridges a month in India. "A three to five per cent share in organised market is what we are eyeing for this year."

NCR has been selling compatible cartridges in India for the last year and a half.

"Almost all the leading banks in India are our customers. We started targetting corporates only in the last six months and the response so far has been excellent," he said.

Gupta said close to 20 large corporations in India have bought the idea of using NCR's compatible cartridges.

NCR at present has 60 dealers in India. "We plan to take this to 100 by the end of this financial year," he said.