Rather, it is the sea change in attitude among the industry’s top executives that is remarkable, arising as it has from a vicious cocktail of overcapacity, falling paginations and spiralling input costs.
The first of these ingredients has been a problem for a decade or more but in spite of that as recently as 2008 major investments in web offset kit were still being made. This is because there was no unity of thought among the management of the biggest printers.
Some were investing and chasing capacity, while others were consolidating and taking out older kit. All the while prices continued their inexorable slide as the industry failed to take collective responsibility for its single biggest problem. The tonic for this was always going to be the painful cutting of old, redundant capacity needed to bring supply in line with demand and restore some element of sanity to web prices.
The events of the past two weeks would suggest that we are now headed in that direction – the irony being that it wasn’t (solely) overcapacity that finally delivered the reality check. Ink prices, transport costs, and utilities hikes are at the root of web bosses’ newfound agreement on the need to take action.
While the loss of Wyndeham’s Plymouth site is another tragic loss – and probably not the last – to a once vibrant industry, it is regrettably necessary to ensure the long-term profitability and survival of its peers.
Simon Nias is news editor of PrintWeek
Bosses' change of tack will put web on the right course
The turnaround in the web offset sector in the past 12 months has been fascinating. Web printers have been losing money at an escalating rate for the past five years, so I'm obviously not referring to a reduction in the level of red ink on the sector's balance sheets.
