Australian printers enjoyed the best press utilisation rates in the world last year, according to the drupa global trend report.
In a somewhat surprising claim, the report said that 56% of local printers reported improved utilisation, compared to a falling global average of 44%:
Regionally North America and the Middle East reported broadly similar results to last year and Australia even reported better conditions (56% improved utilisation compared with 41% last year). But South & Central America and Asia reported worsening conditions.
However, the news was not so good for Australian suppliers, with Australia/Oceania reporting the worst international supplier revenue figures of any region for the year – down 14%:
Supplier revenues and margins are a mixed picture. The regional pattern for supplier revenues is very mixed with an overall net positive balance. Those reporting revenues up are North America (+21%) and Asia (+11%), both S/C America and Africa are neutral at 0% and there is bad news for the Middle East (-5%), Europe (-4%) and Australia/Oceania (-14%).
The Drupa report warned that while the financial health of printers is dependent on increasing utilisation to counteract a drop in prices, Australia/Oceania showed “great weakness reflecting the fragile economic performance in those regions.”
Printer revenues rise with greater utilisation despite price and margin falls. It is clear that the financial health of printers worldwide is dependent on ever-increasing utilisation to counteract a universal drop in prices and margins. Strikingly in every case all measures have slipped backwards in 2014, sometimes by just a little and sometimes by a lot, except paper prices where the reduction in price increases has slowed (a price increase is treated as negative in this measure). Europe and Australia/Oceania show great weakness reflecting the fragile economic performance in those regions while the softening of economic prospects for Asia and South/Central America are reflected in poor overall measures.
The study concluded that the printing industry is showing sustained recovery from the global recession, with 48% of service providers expecting their company’s economic situation to improve in the coming year.
“The generally upbeat picture reported by the expert panel surprised us,” said Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, Chairman of Messe Düsseldorf, the company that organised of the report.
“Both the print service providers and the international supplier industry gave a positive evaluation of the economic situation of their own companies,” said Dornscheidt. “Even more surprising, however, was that the print and supplier industry is heading into 2015 with a very positive outlook.”
But results from individual performance measures revealed “a much more mixed picture,” according to the report:
Sales for print service providers continue to rise – but are less pronounced. 39 % of print service providers report an increase, whereas 22 % show a drop in sales. This positive balance of 17 % is well below the positive net balance of 27 % from the first survey.
The margins for print service providers continue to fall. Almost half (43 %) of the print service providers surveyed report falling margins, while just 16 % succeeded in increasing margins. Positive exceptions here are the markets of North America and the Middle East, where 29 and 28 % reported increased margins.
Digital print is growing fast but is still a small percentage of turnover for most printers. As quickly as the share of digital printing in the overall print technology mix continues to rise, most turnover continues to be generated from traditional print. Only ten percent of the print service providers surveyed achieved more than 25 % of their 2014 sales in digital printing (2013: 8 %).
Print service providers are not turning to services outside the print sector. Often recommended as a new business area – but not yet realised in practice: just 27 % of the print providers surveyed achieved more than ten percent of their sales with services outside the print sector (e.g. asset management for customers, updating databases, etc.).
The entire version of the Drupa report is available in English and other languages for a price of EUR 249.00 at www.drupa.com. The Executive Summary is available as a free download.
(The word drupa is a portmanteau of the German words druck and papier; print and paper respectively.)