Analog has slowed beyond steady and is now declining at a rate of 2.7% per year with offline print shipments following at a projected CAGR of -6.0%. While it doesn't mean extinction just yet, it's a backward movement that doesn't promise any new profits and it's all happening amid harsh global economic conditions.
Elsewhere in commercial printing, there's another kind of momentum gaining traction. A forward-moving, growth-oriented shift that's changing the industry with a new world of limitless possibilities.
According to Research and Markets, The Global Commercial Printing Market was valued at USD 400.46 billion in 2019, and it is projected to be worth USD 460.28 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 2.24% during the period 2020-2025. So, what's behind this industry growth when analog and offline are on decline?
Digital print is driving growth with its unique ability to respond to rising customer demands and optimise operations. Its upward progression stands at a CAGR of 5.5 % since 2014 amid analog's decrease of 2.7% YOY over the same 5-year stretch. With forecasts of digital becoming 30% of total market revenue by 2026, it's easy to see where there are real growth opportunities available for the taking.
Capturing this real growth rests on the ability to quickly react and sell to a changing market, improve operational agility, and provide a faster time-to-market. But how digitising your production line can keep you competitive and profitable in an unpredictable economy?
Digital Darwinism
We're doing business in a world of digital Darwinism-but opportunities are available for those who are willing to transform to keep up. In an economy that's fast changing and full of surprises, being flexible and agile in order to respond to new and vastly varied demands is the new standard in commercial printing.
With newly risen desires predicted to sustain their growth for years to come, capturing the opportunities that are trending today is safeguarding success for tomorrow.
HP Industrial Technology - Indigo & Inkjet – Working Better Together
HP has been selling Indigo and PageWide Inkjet technology for over fifteen years, driving relevant migration of analog sheets to digital. The advent of B2 digital over the past decade – through the Indigo Series 4 (and now Series 5) and the PageWide press “T” series – has accelerated technological change in the general commercial print industry.
There are many examples of customers utilizing both Indigo presses (for their unique quality Electro-ink output, substrate variability and sheet-fed volume capabilities) with PageWide technology providing exceptional production speeds with the new Brilliant Ink technology. Quite simply class-leading products, playing to strengths of both technology types. Working better together, like HP’s founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.
Honoring print with decades of innovation
Anyone can print, but not everyone can honor the printed piece in a way that encompasses its value. Any press can produce a printed piece, but not every press can gather a group of creators, innovators, and scientists behind it.
With HP’s innovative technology, commercial printers can optimise overall production efficiency and achieve unprecedented flexibility that lifts performance in every area of business, even for existing offset presses.
But what makes HP customers truly remarkable is the ability to combine powerful technology with a worldwide network of print professionals that have mastered its use. It’s this kind of synthesis between technology and humanity that turns a deep loyalty to print into real achievement for today’s printers.
Meet the born to run press
Designed with offset users in mind, the HP 100K Digital Press has earned its reputation for nonstop productivity, operation-altering efficiency, and the ability to help owners reimagine TCO. Keep quality at offset levels, while benefiting from the cost-saving and process-simplifying benefits of digital. Cut down plate volume, save on price- per-copy, and reduce make ready waste.
Virtual demonstration of the HP Indigo 100K Digital Press
With the ability to complete hundreds of jobs per day, this press is the perfect way to optimize your production floor—allowing you to direct the right jobs, to the right machine, to deliver work faster and more profitably.
Inkjet, the HP Way
The strength of HP’s print leadership is demonstrated in the HP PageWide Industrial Web Press portfolio; a proven press platform with over 10 years in worldwide production environments built on two billion dollars invested in inkjet technology research and development.
HP is leading the analog to digital printing transformation by delivering solutions that enable more efficient operations that unlock high value applications and experiences for print service providers and their customers. HP’s unique approach of developing and manufacturing every component in a PageWide press, termed vertical integration, gives their customers one source for accountability, harmonious components, faster development of innovative features, and confidence in future roadmaps.
HP is committed to the upgradability of every PageWide web press since the launch in 2009. Customers have taken advantage of upgrade options in ink, software, printheads, print servers, dryers, and many other solution innovations. Forklift upgrades are a thing of the past when investing in a PageWide web press.
2020 vision
In March 2020, HP introduced the HP PageWide Web Press T250 HD, the first press featuring HP Brilliant Ink. Designed with offset-class print quality, the T250 HD sets a new standard for high volume production inkjet by enabling more applications—commercial, direct mail, publishing, and transactional—by printing directly to uncoated and coated offset media, all in one press. It’s a 2-up duplex press that offers print speeds of up to 500 fpm in Performance and Performance HDK modes, with a monthly duty cycle of up to 62M letter sized images.
The T250 HD supports a wide a range of applications
Become the next HP Indigo/Inkjet Success Story
When you have a team of real experts behind you, who learn from every market change and advance in technology, it’s easy to rewrite your story into one that ends with success. Here are just a few of the countless printers who we take pride in partnering with.
“By adding HP Inkjet technology alongside our fleet of HP Indigos, we are able to deliver on demand personalised volumes of 1 through to million’s through the same workflow, with the same controls, to the same quality standards. Aligning our inkjet capabilities and our existing on demand experience has allowed us to talk to a completely new customer base who previously would not have entertained transforming their business into a digital, just in time solution.”
Jon Bailey, Precision Proco Group
“Print on demand, short or long print? Not a problem, the HP Indigo 12000 Digital Press allows us to request the exact volume needed by our customers without the waste of a traditional set up, saving water, energy, and reducing CO2.”
Ian Conetta, Delga Press
“We’ve improved our workflow, which means we can process more orders, with lower labor percentages pricing enabling us to be more competitive on pricing and attractive to our customers.”
Simon Cooper, Solopress
“There were a lot of fears moving from offset to digital, fear of the unknown, how would staff react, how would clients react. We were walking away from a lot of turnover. But once we made the move to digital, we rebranded the business and that kick-started the whole new digital journey. The HP Indigo 12000 digital press has massively improved what we can offer our clients. The market is constantly changing: the days of long runs are gone; the days of three-week lead time have gone. People want shorter runs, turn around faster. With HP Indigo we can give our clients all that – we can do short-runs, many instances in the same day. Our turnover has been pretty static for years but within 18 months of putting in the Indigo we’ve seen a 30% increase.”
Andy Matthews, Crescent Press
“Deploying and utilising the correct technology across the full spectrum of our targeted product portfolio is paramount to the strategy of JDP and Venn. We have a very clear vision on how we incorporate our clients’ requirements from the ever-evolving world of the printed product. Ensuring we are a tech-led smart manufacturer of all things print, will always be our core DNA.”
Anthony Thirlby, JDP
References
- Smithers Pira - The Future of Digital vs Offset Printing to 2024
- Research and Markets - Global Commercial Printing Market Report 2020
- Smithers Pira - Post-drupa Technology Forecast for Print and Printed Packaging to 2026
