Four Questions With Scott MacKenzie, West Point Products
- By Wendy McRae
- Oct 01, 2009
Sustainability and green-forward thinking are top of mind issues these days. According to the U.S. government’s BioPreferred program, created to increase the purchase and use of biobased products, “making products from biologically produced carbon containing material, rather than extracting new carbon from mines or wells, enables us to better manage the carbon cycle, reducing the amount of new carbon released into the atmosphere.”
One company at the forefront of this kind of green thinking is West Point Products. At World Expo 2009 West Point Products launched AgriTone, a line of premium replacement toner cartridges with a patented bio-based toner. We talked with Scott MacKenzie, manager, market analysis, about AgriTone.
RECHARGER: Please give us some background of the development of these bio-based toners and how long has West Point Products been working on this project? How will these cartridges make a difference in the marketplace and in the environment?
Bio-based toners have been years in development. According to the resin designer, they had product that "worked" as early as two years ago, but wanted to work it more to get it to a more competitive state. West Point Products has been working on this product for many months by testing the product and building the brand. AgriTone cartridges are powered by BioBlack, a bio-based toner that contains upwards of 35 percent bio-content. We believe this to be not only the highest quality bio-based toner on the market, but also the toner with the highest bio-content. This presents a number of unique opportunities for resellers, as end-user demand for this type of product has been pent up for quite some time. Moreover, the environmental benefits associated with using renewable resources in manufacturing are well documented. (For more information on that, interested readers are encouraged to visit the BioPreferred Web site
RECHARGER: How will you encourage buyers to spend more for these cartridges? What are the benefits and challenges of using bio-based toners?
The environmental benefits of this product are its critical difference between AgriTone and our regular line of cartridges. Price-wise, it is well suited for OEM conversions, particularly for companies looking to lessen their environmental footprint. Despite the increased cost due to R&D and the more expensive toner, there is still a cost-savings relative to the OEM.
RECHARGER: Who do you see the customers being for these cartridges? Do you eventually see a lot of competition from OEMs and the rest of remanufacturers for this space?
First and foremost, government agencies, specific ally the USDA, have been looking for a product like this for a long time. Through the USDA's BioPreferred program, U.S. government agencies are strongly encouraged to purchase bio-based products, for several reasons — they increase energy independence by alleviating the need for petroleum products, they increase demand for existing agricultural products thereby spurring economic development and they support local agriculture by following recommendations promoted by the USDA and the 2008 Farm Bill. Aside from the government, any end users currently using OEM products are prime candidates for this, particularly in this economy. There are many benefits associated with it. WPP got a lot of attention at World Expo because of this product launch. We have also been featured in news outlets across the country over the last week. As is the case with all successful products, we expect AgriTone to be imitated. The question will be whether or not our competition, OEMs included, can launch a product that performs as well or contains as much bio-content as AgriTone. We fully expect to remain a leader in both of those regards, and continue to test the product thoroughly to ensure continuous improvement./P>
RECHARGER:Where does color fit in and what are the challenges with a bio-based color toner? Each toner developed to go into AgriTone cartridges is a large project unto itself. The toner for AgriTone has been in development for years, and has just recently reached the point that we were satisfied with its quality and bio-content. We continue to work diligently to produce the toner for additional SKUs (more to be launched in the fall), and color is certainly on our list, but predicting when those will be available is difficult at present. Rest assured that West Point Products sees the opportunity, and will launch color as soon as we feel a suitable toner is available.
This article originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Recharger.