OEM’s “affordable cartridges” and awareness campaign attempts to deter refilling in India.
HP is working to compete against India’s cartridge-refilling industry by offering a range of cheap cartridges and launching an awareness campaign highlighting what it believes to be the negative effects of refilling, reports The Hindu.
According to the article, HP claims that refilled cartridges damage “both the cartridge and the printer”, and has seen success in the sale of its affordable cartridges launched to lure price-conscious customers away from refilled products.
“The launch of affordable cartridges, starting at Rs. 499 ($9.37/€6.91), two years ago has helped combat refilling. We’ve seen our market share rise from 38 to 47 percent,” said Bharat Kharbanda, Country Category Manager at HP India, who added that the refill industry has a market share of almost 30 percent in both the ink and toner cartridge markets in India.
Bharat continued: “We plan on continuing with this approach and making all our printers compatible with this cartridge. Right now, only roughly half of our printers are compatible with the affordable cartridge, from now on all the printers we introduce will be able to use this. We aim to take back lost sales and win back our market share from the refillers.”
The Recycler recently reported on HP’s recycling programme, Planet Partners, which encourages its customers to return used cartridges to the manufacturer, thus reducing the opportunities for remanufacturers to acquire empties.