That was the clarion call at the PPA Magazines 2002 conference (London, 7-8 May) from Southernprints commercial director, John Sharp, who said every UK magazine printer had been hurt by downward pressure on prices.

Sharps firm is investing 16m over three years on new kit, including two 48pp Heidelberg webs, but said printers were faced with a "risk and return situation where the higher the investment and therefore risk, the greater the returns must be".

Sharp said that print prices "were unlikely to increase in the foreseeable future" so profits must come from reduced cost and efficiencies.

"Buyers have increasingly treated print as a commodity so we have overcapacity and depressed prices. Efficiency goes up but flexibility goes down. Printers cant accommodate the conflicting requirements of schedule flexibility and reduced prices," Sharp said.

He added that there was a Catch 22 situation: "Printers recognise they need to invest to produce the type of product that their customer wants, but to justify the cost of investments prices need to rise between 10% and 20%

"Publishers also want to make profits, but they believe print prices must be lower to enable them to invest in new products. Same objectives but conflicting strategies," said Sharp.

He also forecast a gloomy outlook for UK web offset magazine printers if the sectors current woes continued: "Print losses mount, so that when customers search for alternative presses they cant be found in the UK."

"How secure is our printing base? Not very," said Sharp. He refused to lay the blame for the UKs problems solely on the weak euro, and admitted that many continental competitors had "bigger, better, faster presses".

Story by Gordon Carson