Being a Printronix and Tally Genicom distributor, we are asked time and again for the ribbons which don't correspond to our region. This blogpost is meant to spill the beans on what are the regionalized cartridges, their benefits and what to do if you/your client is stuck with a printer from another region.
A little background first - Starting with P7000 cartridge ribbons, Printronix started to ship regionalized cartridges - 4 different part numbers for 4 different regions. Before the cartridge ribbon, there used to be single part number spool ribbons. Chips in the cartridge ribbons made it possible to discriminate the printers
Protecting Supply Chain Ecosystem
Printronix consumable is typically sold by the channel that sells the printers. Since Printronix operates in a niche market of high end line printers, their channel also operates with high operational cost characterized by technical know how requisite and longer sales cycle than say HP printer channel. Its not a channel that you can deploy overnight and its obvious that printronix wants to safeguard their interests.
With the regionalized cartridges, Printronix made sure that the printers and consumable sales stays within the region and any cross region trading of consumbale doesn't happen. This directly translates to more business for someone who worked hard on selling a printer, by selling more consumable and not losing it to another region. That's a Happy Channel working on healthy margins, staying loyal forever.
Consumable chips tied to printer variant
These are not just different part numbers, but there is a different firmware in each cartridge . Since the Cartridge ribbons use chips, they can discriminate the printer and make sure that a particular chip works only for a particular printer.
Lets take a look at the 4 regionalized chips
| Suffix | Region | Example of Consumable |
| 01 | EMEA | 255049-101 |
| 02 | Americas | 255049-102 |
| 03 | Asia Pacific | 255049-103 |
| 04 | India/China | 255049-104 |
If you bought the printer in middle East, its shipped with a firmware that's designed to work only with EMEA ribbon. Ribbon from any other region will not work , or rather the chip deployed in any other region ribbon won't work.
Remote Fix for Wrong Region
If you ( or your client) has a printer that doesn't correspond to the region its installed in , it means that at the time of printer installation a cross border sales did happen. Printronix has your back though - they can remotely change the printer to the region its installed in , provided that the end user is willing to start buying from the regional channel and gives the remote access to the printer.
All the Tally Genicom and Printronix Ribbons we sell are EMEA ( Europe and Middle East) version and we don't have access to other regions ribbons.
