As the internet and digital camera driven, photo processing lab industry continues to grow, minimizing operating costs has become a top priority. With more and more competition and new companies popping up on the internet almost on a daily bases, many photo processing labs have found that the traditional method of printing customer variable shipping data (address, barcodes etc) onto labels and manually applying them to photo bags/envelopes is both costly and inefficient.

For over fifteen years, PSI Engineering has been developing laser envelope and production laser printers as well as distribution center automation systems and as a result has become a leader in material handling and inline document automation field. Photo processing labs which implement PSI Engineering's flag ship laser envelope printing system, the Laser Mail 5020 will realize immediate cost savings. This system can print high quality customer information directly on to photo bags/envelopes in one pass.

The Laser Mail 5020 will print logos, barcodes, customer particulars and pricing information onto various sized photo bags/envelopes. The 5020 envelope printer has an extremely low operating cost compared to other laser printers on the market. Printing complete customer information in one pass saves considerable time and labor when compared to printing two or three labels and then applying them to the photo bags/envelopes by hand, a method still employed by many photo processing labs.

Cost Savings
Equipped with PSI's "Load-On-The- Fly" feeder system, the Laser Mail 5020 minimizes user intervention since the feeder can load up to 1,000 photo bags/envelopes. Feeder reloads can take place while the system is in operation, meaning virtually no downtime.
"Typically our customers have found that the average cost of affixing labels, [including label and labor costs] onto 5000 photo bags/envelopes monthly is approximately $5278," says Frank P. Bonsu, Printer Solutions Account Manager at PSI Engineering. Using PSI's Laser Mail 5020 to print 5000 envelopes per month will only cost about $321 (including consumable costs and equipment costs amortized over 5 years). "It's hard to ignore savings like that," Bonsu notes.