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Business guide · Cost & return on investment
How long does a CI flexo press take to pay for itself?
Most suppliers answer this with a monthly repayment figure. That number assumes you already decided to buy. This article works backwards instead: from your order book, your machine hours, and the jobs you cannot win today.
At a glance
Payback on a flexo press has almost nothing to do with the purchase price and everything to do with machine hours. Here is the short version.
- The constraint is hours, not metres. A press running 180 m/min with a 120-minute changeover loses about 46% of its week to makeready. That is the number worth attacking.
- Speed only pays back if you have work for it. Moving from 180 to 400 m/min frees 192 hours a month. Those hours are worth nothing unless you can fill them.
- In the worked example below, payback lands between 9 and 40 months — depending entirely on how many extra jobs you win.
- Sometimes you should not buy the servo press. If nothing changes on the order book, a stack press will retire the same work roughly twice as fast.
- We publish real price ranges. Stack presses from USD 10,000; a full-servo 8-colour CI from USD 881,000.
What ROI actually means here
If you search for how to calculate return on investment for a flexo press, you will find two kinds of answer. The first is a loan amortisation table, which tells you what the bank charges and nothing about whether the machine was a good decision. The second is a supplier brochure claiming a two-year payback, usually with the inputs left out.
Neither is useful. A press is not an investment that pays a dividend; it is a machine that converts hours into printed metres. So this is the only payback formula that matters:
Payback (months) = (purchase price installation) ÷ (extra contribution earned per month)
Everything in the top line is fixed and predictable. Everything in the bottom line is up to you. If a supplier cannot tell you what they assume for the bottom line, they have not done the calculation either — they have quoted you a monthly instalment and called it ROI.
Two bottom lines, not one
It helps to separate the situations, because they behave completely differently:
- Growth case. You win new work the old press physically cannot handle. Every extra metre is new contribution, and the payback is fast.
- Replacement case. You buy because the old machine keeps breaking. You print the same tonnes you always printed, slightly cheaper. The payback is slower, and the honest answer may be to repair the old press for another two years.
The five cost lines that decide payback
Below is an 8-colour CI press at 1,000–1,200 mm, running a normal mix of film and paper jobs. The rates are illustrative — substitute your own — but the proportions hold for most flexible packaging converters.
| Cost line | USD / 1,000 m | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Ink and coating | 100 | Driven by coverage, not by speed |
| Labour (allocated) | 75 | Where a servo press earns most of its keep |
| Energy | 32 | Drying and chillers dominate the meter |
| Plates and anilox sleeves | 28 | Sleeve mounting cuts this on changeovers |
| Startup and shutdown waste | 18 | 80 m per job on a CI press, 250 m on a stack |
| Maintenance and service | 42 | Including spare-parts lead time |
| Total | 295 | Before amortising the capital itself |
Note what is not in that table: depreciation, interest, insurance and rent. Converters who try to build those into a per-metre cost end up with a number that looks impressive and explains nothing. Charge them separately, or not at all.
A worked example
A converter running 60 film jobs a month, averaging 30,000 m each, is replacing a gear-driven CI press with a full-servo CI press. Top line first:
| Step | Old gear-driven CI | New full-servo CI |
|---|---|---|
| Printing speed, effective | 180 m/min | 400 m/min |
| Print time | 167 min | 75 min |
| Changeover | 120 min | 20 min |
| Total | 287 min | 95 min |
Across 60 jobs that is 192 machine hours a month back on the shop floor. At 1.58 hours per job, those hours could absorb another 120 jobs per month. The question that decides your payback is simply: how many of those can you actually sell?
Take a conversion price of USD 0.45 per metre and a 35% contribution margin, which is USD 0.1575 per metre. Win 12 extra jobs of 30,000 m and the freed hours produce 360,000 m of new work worth USD 56,700 a month. On a delivered price of roughly USD 1.03 million including commissioning, that is a payback of about 18 months.
Note what we assumed. Not a cent of the labour saving was banked as cash, and no price increase was taken for the better register. The whole case rests on 12 extra jobs a month, which is 10% of the existing order book.
Payback sensitivity: what actually moves the number
Same press, same USD 1.03 million. Only the assumption about extra work changes.
| Extra jobs / month | Extra contribution / month | Payback |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | USD 47,250 | ~22 months |
| 12 | USD 56,700 | ~18 months |
| 18 | USD 85,050 | ~12 months |
| 25 | USD 118,125 | ~9 months |
Notice that the range is 9 to 22 months for the same machine. Anyone quoting you a single payback figure without stating the job assumption is selling. Run your own table before you sign anything.
When a cheaper press pays back faster
This is the part most suppliers leave out, so we will keep it in. If your order book is full and the new press simply replaces tonnage you would print anyway, you do not get the growth contribution. You get the running-cost saving on work that was already going out the door — roughly USD 26,000 a month in this example, because labour and energy barely change. At that rate the same USD 1.03 million machine takes about 40 months to pay back.
Forty months is not a bad investment. It is still a worse one than a USD 120,000–180,000 stack press, which will handle that same work for about half the capital and pay back in roughly 14 months. If that is your situation, buy the stack press. There is no reason to take on a servo machine, more maintenance skills and a longer payback, just to print the same film.
The honest test is one question. If the new press changes nothing about the work you bring in, buy the cheaper machine. If it lets you take work you currently turn down, buy the faster one — and be able to name those jobs in writing before you order.
Five things buyers forget when budgeting
These sit outside the per-metre table and outside the purchase price, and they consistently surprise first-time buyers. Ask for each of them in writing:
- 1
Installation and commissioningAllow 2–3 weeks for an engineer on site. Travel, visas, accommodation and site preparation are usually quoted separately.
- 2
Spare parts lead timeServo drives, anilox sleeves and bearing units are the items that stop a line. Ask what is in stock at the factory and what is held abroad.
- 3
Operator trainingA servo press with automatic register needs far less skill per shift. Budget the training anyway; it is not a cost, it is the payback.
- 4
Support equipmentCompressor, solvent extraction, chiller and extraction ducting are frequently not in the press price and often not in the building either.
- 5
Defect rate at speedThe last 20% of nameplate speed is where register drifts. Plan around an effective speed, not the number on the specification sheet.
| Press type | Changeover | Startup waste / job | Payback driver | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stack press, gear-driven, 4–6 colour | 90–120 min | 200–300 m | Lowest capex per unit of output | Replacing one ageing machine; the output is already sold |
| Gear-driven CI, 6–8 colour | 60–90 min | 120–180 m | Throughput and register quality at mid capex | Converters moving up into film work |
| Full-servo CI, 8–10 colour | 15–25 min | 60–100 m | Machine hours released, and a job mix you can now quote | Printers with an order book they cannot currently accept |
Changeover and waste figures are the ones used throughout this article. Price bands differ too widely by configuration to publish as a single number — ask us for the current band against your specification.
LISHG Machinery: published prices, unpublished assumptions
We are based in Wenzhou and have built flexo equipment for over 20 years, with about 70% of sales going to 90-odd countries. On pricing, we would rather be compared than defended. These are the published figures:
- Stack presses, from USD 10,000. Paper and nonwoven. Compact footprint, quick to learn. This is the answer for the replacement case above.
- Standard CI satellite, 4–8 colours up to 300 m/min. Flexible packaging on a tighter budget.
- CI with sleeve technology, up to 300 m/min. Sleeve mounting shortens plate change, which is where the changeover time in the table above comes from.
- Full-servo CI, up to 500 m/min, ±0.1 mm register. Top 8-colour model, USD 881,000–1,028,000. Films 8–250 µm, papers 40–120 g/m².
What we do not publish is the payback figure for your plant, because we have not seen your order book. Give us your job mix and your current effective speed, and we will run these same tables against your numbers rather than ours — including the scenario where the cheaper machine is the right answer.
Send us your materials. You pay the freight; we print your job on the machine you are considering and send back the run and the read-out. One-year warranty, 24-hour technical support, and an engineer for on-site installation and operator training.
Common questions
Is 18 months a realistic payback for a CI press?
It is realistic if the press lets you win work you cannot run today. It is optimistic if the machine only replaces work you already have. Run both scenarios and buy against the slower one.
Why does my payback come out worse than the one I was quoted?
Three reasons, in order of frequency: the supplier counted the labour saving as cash, assumed the full nameplate speed as the effective speed, or assumed you win every extra job you are free to produce.
New or refurbished CI press?
Refurbished wins on capital and pays back fastest if you have steady work and a maintenance engineer on site. New wins where register stability, changeover time and spare-parts availability matter more than the purchase price.
Does the loan interest change the payback?
Yes, but modestly. On USD 1 million over five years, interest adds roughly 8–10% to the cost base and pushes the payback out by one to two months in the worked example above.
Does a servo press need to run at 500 m/min to pay back?
No. The register stability and the shorter changeover do more for payback than headline speed. Sell the machine on the 20-minute changeover, not on the 500 m/min on the spec sheet.
Can I test my own materials before buying?
Yes. You cover the freight; we print your film or paper and send back the finished sample, the settings used and a video of the run.
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Want the payback worked out against your numbers?
Send us your job mix, current effective speed and roughly what you spend a month. We'll run these tables on your figures and tell you if the cheaper machine is the better buy.
Wenzhou Lisheng Printing & Packaging Machinery Co., Ltd. (LISHG Machinery)
Phone / WhatsApp: 86 17758129796
Email: merrylishg@gmail.com
Website: lsprintingmachine.com
