Recently our ‘Delivering the Data’ series featured statistics on finances and business from Drupa’s Global trends report. This time, we’ll look at the same report but with a focus on print technology. Overall, the report expects global investment in the print industry to be strong in 2014 as economic conditions improve and business confidence returns. In particular, print companies are seeing strengthening demand for digital print and looking to invest in new equipment and IT solutions.
Key data
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85% of commercial printers worldwide have digital print capabilities |
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57% of commercial printers reported that digital production had taken away either nothing or less than 10% of their conventional print turnover |
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38% of publishing printers and 57% of packaging printers have no digital print capability |
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52% of respondents say that print technology is their top investment priority; 49% say finishing equipment and 41% say prepress/workflow/MIS |
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Nearly a third of companies have installed web-to-print services |
Additional facts
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The top investment drivers for printers are production efficiency, additional capacity and new added-value services.
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The added-value services that have seen the most widespread adoption are variable data print, creative design, and stock, storage and fulfilment. Wide-format print was also reported as being commonplace.
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IT infrastructure is attracting investment as print businesses worldwide become more IT driven.
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North American commercial printers were shown to have adopted a wider variety of different services compared with other regions.
The Drupa Global Trends report is based on a questionnaire that was completed by 2425 senior decision makers in print and related industries (1419 printers; 498 suppliers; 508 print purchasers). The report includes information and statistics on economic and market developments, as well as business and technology investment trends. It is available here.
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