Ricoh Australia’s new facility
The distribution centre in Eastern Creek features a host of environmentally-friendly features.
ProPrint Australia reported on the opening of the new facility in New South Wales, which will accommodate the OEM’s distribution centre as well as “other national functions”, and the construction of which was previously reported by The Recycler in 2012.
The facility is 10,470 square metres in size, hosts over 100 employees and features a range of environmentally-friendly features. It has a five-star green rating as a result of featuring energy-efficient lights, rainwater collection as well as metering and monitoring, and digital displays showing its water and energy use. The rainwater collection system alone means the site will save over 12,000 litres a week in water, which will be reused.
The company’s head office will remain in Frenchs Forest in the state, though the new facility offers a “single home for all its technical and logistic functions”, a plan implemented before the site was begun in 2012. Other sustainable design features meanwhile included “a garden of native plants designed for limited water use” and a “national workshop” for the recovery and recycling of printer components.
Les Richardson, Ricoh Australia’s Managing Director, stated: “This building will not only be for our warehousing and spare parts, it will also be our national customer response centre; our national technical support centre, which provides support to all of our technicians around the country; our national technician training centre; national run up centre, where we test every machine before it goes to the customer; and our national workshop, where we recover and recycle machine components.”
He added: “In the future we want to continue to build around environmental initiatives, introducing toner cartridge collection and refilling, remanufacturing and second hand machines and recovery of usable parts.”