In the fourth Drupa Global Trends report – which harnesses data from almost 850 printers and 300+ suppliers in the survey run by Printfuture - 42% of printers described their business as in a ‘good’ economic condition in 2016, with just 11% reporting it as ‘poor’, a net balance of +31%, the highest recorded global result of the report series. Prospects for 2017 are better with a net balance of +46%.
However market variances and regional variances are growing. Packaging at +39% net balance and functional (industrial/decorative) at +34% are strongest, while commercial at +26% and publishing at 23% follow behind.
North America once again is the strongest region with a net balance of +49%, followed by Europe and Australia/Oceania at +33%, Central/South America at +29%, Asia at +20%, the Middle East at 19% and Africa at -3%, the first negative net balance of the report series. Indeed on many measures, the Middle East reported a very poor condition, while Africa and Central/South America reported fragile conditions.
Looking at the underlying financial performance figures, printers reported a well-established pattern of falling prices and squeezed margins, compensated for by increasing revenues assisted by higher utilisation. In terms of conventional print, the well-established trends continued of falling run lengths and lead times and an increasing number of jobs to be handled.
What was different this year was a possible pause in the historic rise in the proportion of turnover that is digital print (28% of printers in 2015 reported that more than 25% of their turnover was digital while the figure for 2016 was 27%). Nevertheless digital print has an ever-increasing hold on functional print with inkjet the dominant technology for most applications, up from 61% in 2014 to 74% in 2016.
Similarly digital continues to grow rapidly in commercial print e.g. wide-format print installations up from 37% in 2013 to 50% in 2016.
The much talked of growth of digitally printed packaging is starting, with 34% of packaging printers offering digital print, up from 24% in 2014, although demand is patchy as yet.
Even more striking was the clear fall in the number of Web-to-print installations globally down from 26% in 2015 to 23% in 2016. This decline was not universal eg in Asia it rose, but in some regions eg North America and Australia/Oceania, the fall was decisive.
Turning to capital investment plans, 42% spent more over the last 12 months and just 11% spent less, a net balance of +31%, and there was a net balance of +41% in respect of plans for 2017. This positive story was true for most regions, the exception being the Middle East where there was a new low for the report series of just +5% in 2016. For the first time the top priority globally was finishing, followed closely by new presses. That in turn was closely followed by pre-press/workflow/MIS; a sign that automation is being taken seriously.
As for press investment plans, sheetfed litho led the global race followed by digital toner cutsheet colour. But what was another first for the report series, each of the four markets had a different top press investment priority - commercial, digital toner cutsheet colour; publishing, sheetfed offset; packaging, flexo and functional, digital inkjet rollfed colour.
The full report will be released in English in a few weeks; the executive summary will be available at www.drupa.com.