I have an inkjet printer at home and I recently bought some new ink cartridges. One price was £16.75 (€11.86) (excluding VAT) for 35ml of cyan, magenta and yellow, the equivalent of some $800 per litre, well on the road to a million dollars per tonne with sales tax. I bought a cheaper remanufactured – refilled – alternative. It came in a high-value cartridge, but even so, the supply of inkjet ink can be very lucrative.

While offset, gravure and flexo users will pay around $3-6 per pound for their ink, commercial inkjet users will pay about $50-150 per litre. Graphics and packaging inks are cheaper, but command an average price of well over $75,000 per tonne, considerably higher than the equivalent liquid ink for flexo or gravure at around £8,000 per tonne.

The premium for conventional inks allows the leading product suppliers to maintain the very high prices, and margins, on ink. As a result it is possible for the inkjet ink markets to grow in the coming years without resulting in the commoditisation of inks, along with a consequent reduction in the retail price for these materials.

It is possible for the inkjet ink markets to grow in the coming years without resulting in the commoditisation of inks.

Smithers Pira puts total inkjet consumption at 48.4 million litres in 2010, a market value of a little over $4 billion in total. Going forward it sees growth continuing: by 2016 it will be worth some $6.8 billion for a volume of over 68 million litres. This includes all inks, for wide-format and fixed-head equipment used in signage, textiles, commercial printing, labels, packaging, and mailing.

One of the remarkable things about inkjet is the way that suppliers have managed to maintain the high selling price for ink. In 2010 the average price paid by the end users for inkjet ink was $83.50 per litre.