Bearing in mind the turmoil that has continued to impact print in the past 12 months, you could be forgiven for expecting this year’s Top 500 to be a pretty depressing read. However, you would be wrong.

According to the numbers in our review of the past 10 years of the PrintWeek Top 500 on p22, in terms of aver­age turnover growth, 2010/2011 has witnessed the high­est in almost a decade. The pre-tax profit margin of this year’s 500 largest companies paints an equally rosy pic­ture, registering the highest average margin since 2005.

There’s no doubt that the structural change that the industry has been crying out for – to combat overca­pacity, unsustainable prices and improvements in productivity – has been painful, but the good news is that it seems to be working.

However, while the recession has clearly accelerated much-needed change across the industry, making it leaner and fitter than it has been for years, I’m not suggesting for a second that the pain is over. But at least we’re starting to see real evidence of the gain.

To further illustrate that point, we’ve introduced some new elements to this year’s Top 500, where we highlight the 100 best performers across a wide-range of criteria in the ‘performance indicators’ section.

And speaking of strong performers, I must thank our very own Jo Francis together with Daniel Smith, Graham West and Chris Thompson from Grant Thornton whose fanatical attention to detail and dedication enabled us to produce this year’s report.

Whether you use the PrintWeek Top 500 for bench­marking against your peers or the industry as a whole, research or just to give you a snapshot of the fiscal health of the industry, I hope you find this year’s edi­tion as useful as ever.

Darryl Danielli Editor, PrintWeek