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Our industry had HUGE news on June 9th that will impact our entire industry. We have chosen to be forthcoming with our Dealers to allow them to proactively prepare for the anticipated disruption with supplies & equipment. Our view is that every company (remanufacturer or New build supplier) will be impacted by this ban.
What is the news?
On June 9th, the USA banned imports from China-based printer maker Ninestar Corp and their 8 subsidiaries.Who is Ninestar? How are they involved in our industry?
Ninestar Corp is the largest company in the global aftermarket for cartridges and components.
Ninestar owns APEX/Geehy which has about 60-70% of the aftermarket cartridge chip market share and also owns 62% of Lexmark. APEX/Greehy makes all the chips for the new HP Jet Intelligence capable printer models produced over the last 5 years and 100% of the Lexmark machines produced in the last 7 years.How will this affect Dealers?
Aftermarket toner providers will run out of stock as incoming replenishment containers have already been impounded.
Ninestar is the sole manufacturer of chips for some popular models. This will result in no new inventory arriving in the USA for the near future. HP SKUs for models produced in the last 5 years. (Ex. CF258A/X, W2020A/X series). We have about 10 months of inventory on hand. A solution to this may be difficult since no other chip provider has launched this technology over the past year. The likely solution for Remanufacturers will be to supply a used chip for the cartridge, which will not report page volumes/toner levels. This is an unworkable solution for MPS providers. Lexmark SKUs for machines produced in the last 7 years. (Ex. 58D1H00, 58D1U00, 58D1X00, 56F1H00, 56F1U00) We have about 4-6 months of inventory on hand.What is our plan? What will happen to Gold Line toner?
The key difference with Gold Line over most other brands in the market is that we design and engineer our Bill of Materials (BOM).When Gold Line toner was created in 2017, we adopted a multiple contract manufacturer model and qualified several vendors per SKU.This model gives us the ability to move SKUs between assembly partners when we see quality issues or supply chain disruption (EG. During COVID) We will run out of stock on some SKUs as we transition to our other partners and wait 60-90 days for new inventory to be built and shipped. We anticipate 10% of our SKUs will experience stock outs as we work to transition SKUs to our other qualified Gold Line partners.
We are working tirelessly to develop solutions as we all adjust to the reality that the largest company in the global aftermarket for cartridges and components is no longer an option.
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