Sean Milmo, European Editor11.30.15
In times of low growth and squeezed margins, European printers are seeking ways of increasing sales and profitability by gaining an enlarged customer base, providing longer term security particularly during periods of economic difficulties.
A lot of printers are opting to raise the efficiencies of their operations, mainly by cutting costs and achieving higher productivity and quality so that they can win new business from present customers or from others in their existing markets.
Another option is diversification, which due to the widening range of current printing technologies, probably presents the most opportunities for boosting sales and profits.
This drive for more efficiency, combined with diversification, was evident at the recent Print Show at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, England, which was targeting independent printers wanting to move into new markets.
It focused on areas like textile printing, large format graphics, printing as a manufacturing process, printed electronics, enhanced three-dimensional decorative printing and printing on difficult substrates such as glass, advanced plastics and metals.
However, diversification and a new drive for cost-effectiveness poses new challenges for ink producers. Printers are once again manifesting a desire to cut costs with the same or higher level of quality. But this time it comes together with a wish to earn money from different applications, new substrates and novel equipment.
Increasing diversification is changing the structure of the printing market, inks and other consumables in Europe. This is mainly because of a rise in the amount of outsourcing, with a growing number of print services companies contracting out the printing of products which they market themselves.
Reducing Costs
The need to reduce costs is still the primary concern of European printers. Despite low interest rates and a low oil price, high production costs are still putting pressure on margins.
Low-cost no-frills printing equipment was being displayed at the exhibition as a means for raising printing sales, particularly in sectors will high print volumes.
“Any commercial printer searching for ways of opening up new revenue streams has to be looking at low-cost but efficient printing machines,” said Debbie Callaghan, UK marketing manager for Riso, which achieved double-digit growth in revenue across all its markets in the UK last year, particularly in the transactional sector.
“We are finding that in areas like utilities, telecommunications and insurance companies, in-house printing is being combined with increased outsourcing of transactional printed work,” Callaghan explained. “Another expanding area for low-cost high-volume machines is education, such as schools and universities, where it is important to keep expenses down.”
The company also has a policy of being environmentally friendly as shown by its inkjet inks being soya-based. “For us it is a way of getting across an environmental message derived from the use of less power and less CO2 emissions,” Callaghan said.
At the same time print equipment manufacturers are having to offer a greater variety of equipment to respond to the widening range of needs of end-users, which is the driving force behind diversification.
Konica Minolta demonstrated a varnish coatings machine for 3D spot-UV effects for application on packaging, posters and other promotional items. The machine was developed and manufactured by MGI Group, a specialist in digital enhancement equipment, in which Konica Minolta has acquired a 10% share.
“Our coatings machine supplied exclusively to us by MGI is expensive so it’s not the sort of investment made by a small printing business,” said Carsten Ritter, Konica Minolta’s technical product manager for Europe. “But there are ways of dealing with that difficulty. We have just had a sale of a machine in Hamburg, Germany, which is being shared by six commercial printers. That ensures there will be sufficient demand so that it will be operating at full capacity.”
Finding New Opportunities
For a growing number of printers, their quest for greater printing efficiencies has not always matched their desire for diversification. They have instead had to separate the actual printing from the marketing.
They have found opportunities to move into new markets but that they do not have the resources to invest in the necessary printing equipment to compete directly in the new sector.
Instead they have opted to outsource the printing work while concentrating on doing the marketing of the products themselves.
With short-run jobs, often with unattractive margins and necessitating investment in new equipment and skills, it can be more economical to arrange for other printers to do the printing.
“The print industry is changing because a rising number of companies in the printing business are active in more markets,” said Simon Cooper, managing director of Exaprint. “But with a lot of printers, a growing proportion of their revenues is coming just from selling rather than printing. Instead, they are doing more outsourcing of the printing or they are even purchasing printing products so that they can become marketing specialists in certain sectors.”
Exaprint prints a wide range of products from flyers, leaflets and business cards to point-of-sale materials, roll-ups and posters. Its annual output is now around three million printed items, which are supplied through online ordering to companies within the printing and graphics sector.
“We are exclusively a business-to-business operation,” said Cooper. “Our message to printers is that by doing the printing for them we can help them move into new markets. Our advantage is that we have a variety of printing technologies which because of economies of scale can be operated at a lower cost than by an individual printer.”
This shift among a rising number of printers to outsourcing will probably favor the larger ink producers who like to deal with customers making big volume purchases.
“This trend means that for ink manufacturers, there will be fewer small accounts and more large ones to serve,” said Cooper. “Also it is a sector which ink businesses should pay attention to because it is expanding faster than the total print market – at least in the UK.”
Textile printing is an area in which there is a lot more outsourcing, particularly as a result of the greater use of fabrics in promotional graphics, especially in outdoor displays.
For some commercial printers, it is a sector in which a presence is vital, particularly since the printed fabrics market is estimated to have grown over the last five years in the UK by an annual average of 5%. “Textile printing has moved from being a niche sector confined to garments to being a mainstream process,” said one marketing executive at the exhibition.
“Fabric printing can be difficult for small printers,” said Fiona Dallimore, associate director at Marqetspace, which does textile printing contract jobs for fabric displays, rollable banners and posters. “The equipment can be expensive and a lot of expertise is needed. The interaction between inks and paper is relatively predictable, while with fabrics it is different. Furthermore the technologies behind fabric printing are changing so quickly that if you are running an in-house operation your processes can soon become outdated.”
Marqetspace specializes in the printing of polyester-based fabrics with an elastomer component that enables them to be stretched onto a display frame.
“We’re using inkjet presses with a dye-sublimation ink which needs to have heating units with a facility for washing away the excess ink,” said Dallimore. “It is specialist kit which can be expensive and needs know-how to operate properly. It was the sort of work which has been outsourced to printers in China but it’s now being done in the UK.”
Some manufacturers of textile printing equipment, some of which are supplying their own inks, have a strategy of offering printers low-cost hardware to give them a foothold in the sector.
Resolute Group was demonstrating at the exhibition an inkjet fabric printing machine for meeting common requirements without the necessity for what the company calls “extensive graphic features.” It can provide inks customized by its own chemists.
“We aim to be a one-stop shop for printers making their first entry into the sector,” said Colin Marsh, head of Resolute’s inkjet textile printing business. “We can provide printers with the equipment, inks and other consumables they need for adding value to their textile printing.”
Packaging was highlighted at the exhibition as a sector with many opportunities for expansion, with labeling regarded as a low-cost entry point, not just for SME printers but also for small food and consumer product manufacturers wanting to do their own labeling in house.
Sales of Memjet, with an inkjet press with a single-pass page-wide printhead, are now growing at a double-digit rate in the UK. This has been due to its advantage of being around 10 times cheaper than other leading inkjet machines, according to Stuart Botterman, managing director of Magnum Materials, Cheshire, a Memjet distributor.
“This low cost is ideal for small businesses with low-volume sales wanting to diversify,” Botterman said.
Industrial functional printing and even 3D additive manufacturing were other growth areas highlighted at the exhibition. The UK has a rich printing history stretching back over 500 years with plenty of ideas from which new markets can emerge even today.
European Editor Sean Milmo is an Essex, UK-based writer specializing in coverage of the chemical industry.
A lot of printers are opting to raise the efficiencies of their operations, mainly by cutting costs and achieving higher productivity and quality so that they can win new business from present customers or from others in their existing markets.
Another option is diversification, which due to the widening range of current printing technologies, probably presents the most opportunities for boosting sales and profits.
This drive for more efficiency, combined with diversification, was evident at the recent Print Show at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, England, which was targeting independent printers wanting to move into new markets.
It focused on areas like textile printing, large format graphics, printing as a manufacturing process, printed electronics, enhanced three-dimensional decorative printing and printing on difficult substrates such as glass, advanced plastics and metals.
However, diversification and a new drive for cost-effectiveness poses new challenges for ink producers. Printers are once again manifesting a desire to cut costs with the same or higher level of quality. But this time it comes together with a wish to earn money from different applications, new substrates and novel equipment.
Increasing diversification is changing the structure of the printing market, inks and other consumables in Europe. This is mainly because of a rise in the amount of outsourcing, with a growing number of print services companies contracting out the printing of products which they market themselves.
Reducing Costs
The need to reduce costs is still the primary concern of European printers. Despite low interest rates and a low oil price, high production costs are still putting pressure on margins.
Low-cost no-frills printing equipment was being displayed at the exhibition as a means for raising printing sales, particularly in sectors will high print volumes.
“Any commercial printer searching for ways of opening up new revenue streams has to be looking at low-cost but efficient printing machines,” said Debbie Callaghan, UK marketing manager for Riso, which achieved double-digit growth in revenue across all its markets in the UK last year, particularly in the transactional sector.
“We are finding that in areas like utilities, telecommunications and insurance companies, in-house printing is being combined with increased outsourcing of transactional printed work,” Callaghan explained. “Another expanding area for low-cost high-volume machines is education, such as schools and universities, where it is important to keep expenses down.”
The company also has a policy of being environmentally friendly as shown by its inkjet inks being soya-based. “For us it is a way of getting across an environmental message derived from the use of less power and less CO2 emissions,” Callaghan said.
At the same time print equipment manufacturers are having to offer a greater variety of equipment to respond to the widening range of needs of end-users, which is the driving force behind diversification.
Konica Minolta demonstrated a varnish coatings machine for 3D spot-UV effects for application on packaging, posters and other promotional items. The machine was developed and manufactured by MGI Group, a specialist in digital enhancement equipment, in which Konica Minolta has acquired a 10% share.
“Our coatings machine supplied exclusively to us by MGI is expensive so it’s not the sort of investment made by a small printing business,” said Carsten Ritter, Konica Minolta’s technical product manager for Europe. “But there are ways of dealing with that difficulty. We have just had a sale of a machine in Hamburg, Germany, which is being shared by six commercial printers. That ensures there will be sufficient demand so that it will be operating at full capacity.”
Finding New Opportunities
For a growing number of printers, their quest for greater printing efficiencies has not always matched their desire for diversification. They have instead had to separate the actual printing from the marketing.
They have found opportunities to move into new markets but that they do not have the resources to invest in the necessary printing equipment to compete directly in the new sector.
Instead they have opted to outsource the printing work while concentrating on doing the marketing of the products themselves.
With short-run jobs, often with unattractive margins and necessitating investment in new equipment and skills, it can be more economical to arrange for other printers to do the printing.
“The print industry is changing because a rising number of companies in the printing business are active in more markets,” said Simon Cooper, managing director of Exaprint. “But with a lot of printers, a growing proportion of their revenues is coming just from selling rather than printing. Instead, they are doing more outsourcing of the printing or they are even purchasing printing products so that they can become marketing specialists in certain sectors.”
Exaprint prints a wide range of products from flyers, leaflets and business cards to point-of-sale materials, roll-ups and posters. Its annual output is now around three million printed items, which are supplied through online ordering to companies within the printing and graphics sector.
“We are exclusively a business-to-business operation,” said Cooper. “Our message to printers is that by doing the printing for them we can help them move into new markets. Our advantage is that we have a variety of printing technologies which because of economies of scale can be operated at a lower cost than by an individual printer.”
This shift among a rising number of printers to outsourcing will probably favor the larger ink producers who like to deal with customers making big volume purchases.
“This trend means that for ink manufacturers, there will be fewer small accounts and more large ones to serve,” said Cooper. “Also it is a sector which ink businesses should pay attention to because it is expanding faster than the total print market – at least in the UK.”
Textile printing is an area in which there is a lot more outsourcing, particularly as a result of the greater use of fabrics in promotional graphics, especially in outdoor displays.
For some commercial printers, it is a sector in which a presence is vital, particularly since the printed fabrics market is estimated to have grown over the last five years in the UK by an annual average of 5%. “Textile printing has moved from being a niche sector confined to garments to being a mainstream process,” said one marketing executive at the exhibition.
“Fabric printing can be difficult for small printers,” said Fiona Dallimore, associate director at Marqetspace, which does textile printing contract jobs for fabric displays, rollable banners and posters. “The equipment can be expensive and a lot of expertise is needed. The interaction between inks and paper is relatively predictable, while with fabrics it is different. Furthermore the technologies behind fabric printing are changing so quickly that if you are running an in-house operation your processes can soon become outdated.”
Marqetspace specializes in the printing of polyester-based fabrics with an elastomer component that enables them to be stretched onto a display frame.
“We’re using inkjet presses with a dye-sublimation ink which needs to have heating units with a facility for washing away the excess ink,” said Dallimore. “It is specialist kit which can be expensive and needs know-how to operate properly. It was the sort of work which has been outsourced to printers in China but it’s now being done in the UK.”
Some manufacturers of textile printing equipment, some of which are supplying their own inks, have a strategy of offering printers low-cost hardware to give them a foothold in the sector.
Resolute Group was demonstrating at the exhibition an inkjet fabric printing machine for meeting common requirements without the necessity for what the company calls “extensive graphic features.” It can provide inks customized by its own chemists.
“We aim to be a one-stop shop for printers making their first entry into the sector,” said Colin Marsh, head of Resolute’s inkjet textile printing business. “We can provide printers with the equipment, inks and other consumables they need for adding value to their textile printing.”
Packaging was highlighted at the exhibition as a sector with many opportunities for expansion, with labeling regarded as a low-cost entry point, not just for SME printers but also for small food and consumer product manufacturers wanting to do their own labeling in house.
Sales of Memjet, with an inkjet press with a single-pass page-wide printhead, are now growing at a double-digit rate in the UK. This has been due to its advantage of being around 10 times cheaper than other leading inkjet machines, according to Stuart Botterman, managing director of Magnum Materials, Cheshire, a Memjet distributor.
“This low cost is ideal for small businesses with low-volume sales wanting to diversify,” Botterman said.
Industrial functional printing and even 3D additive manufacturing were other growth areas highlighted at the exhibition. The UK has a rich printing history stretching back over 500 years with plenty of ideas from which new markets can emerge even today.
European Editor Sean Milmo is an Essex, UK-based writer specializing in coverage of the chemical industry.