Exclusive! IPEX report reveals vital industry trends - news commentary by Andy McCourt

This is no ordinary post-trade show report but a valuable document that pinpoints the real trends going on in the global printing industry. Print 21 has been privileged to gain a preview, ahead of its publication on Monday July 17th.

The 20-page report shows that 40 per cent of IPEX visitors came from outside the UK – a record. 52,062 net visitors came and there were 31,277 repeat visits. Add exhibiting personnel and total attendance, as measured by accepted trade show practice, was 100,901. These figures reflect the declining number of people employed in the UK printing industry as consolidation marches on, as it has here in Australia and New Zealand.

ANZ attendance was seemingly down from previous shows – 441 unique visitors plus an estimated 60-80 exhibiting personnel registered. The top visitor country outside the UK was Germany with 3.06 per cent of total attendance, followed by The Netherlands and – wait for it – India. This highlights the meteoric rise of India’s printing industry and was reflected in orders placed at the show by Indian printers, for example 12 CtP machines sold by Screen and another 12 by Krause to an Indian newspaper group. Many Goss and MAN Roland web units were sold to India as well.

North American attendance was disappointing at 1.1 per cent, making Australasia and Pacific at 0.9 per cent look quite good in contrast!

The most telling trend revealed by the post-event report is in the reason why sheetfed printers came to the show. Sheetfed represented the largest business activity of visitors, at 27.6 per cent of all attendees. Digital printing was next at 12.1 per cent, followed by web offset at 4.5 per cent.

Offset-to-digital conversion has begun

But the survey of visitors’ main area of interest in going to IPEX paints a different picture. 35.6 per cent stated they came to see digital print technology. Contrast this with the ‘main business activity’ figures and it is quite clear that thousands of sheetfed printers globally intend to invest in, or have a strong interest in, digital printing technology.

Couple this with research by Pira (reported here two weeks ago) www.print21.com.au that indicates a worldwide near-halving of the number of offset/flexo/gravure press installations by 2015, and it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the future direction of our industry has been chipped in stone: – digital rock.

The second-highest area of interest is also a surprise – finishing, with 29.9 per cent of visitors saying they came to look at print finishing. Third – where you might expect it to be number one – was ‘commercial printing’ at 28.8 per cent. This would tend to reflect the ‘value added’ mantra where plain sheets-off-press (digital or offset) are not the main source of profit. Efficient and creative finishing can make or break a business with bottlenecks forming in the bindery if it can’t keep up with the throughput of ever-faster presses. As one US IPEX customer said, “I ain’t buying a digital press without an inline UV coater.”

Another surprise was that 21.2 per cent of visitors came to learn about or buy colour management products – even more than came to see workflow. This really highlights that colour remains a focal point of quality control issues in the printing industry. And also, perhaps, that not enough understand the need for advanced workflows that incorporate colour management.

In its own marketing, IPEX organizers IIR Exhibitions – now part of the giant Informa Group and outright owners of the show – spent in excess of $5.5 million marketing the event, with a mixture of print advertising, online advertising, direct mail, PR and even SMS text messaging. The welcome fact arising from the response analysis is that print – and especially trade magazines such as Print 21 – brought more people to the show than anything else.

Asked how they heard about IPEX 46per cent of visitors polled said it was from either editorial or advertising they read in the trade press. The IPEX website pulled in 17 per cent of visitors and 15 per cent came because of the email campaign conducted by IIRX.

More than 670,000 visits to the IPEX website were made and the most viewed exhibitor pages, in order from number one were: Heidelberg, Xerox, HP, Agfa, Presstek, Bobst and Canon.

But it is the ‘mood’ of an industry that often provides the best insight. Asked if the printing industry is growing, 62 per cent of visitors said an unqualified ‘yes’ whilst only 42 per cent of exhibitors replied in the affirmative. This would indicate that 58 per cent of supply companies might be out of touch with their markets!

Which brings us to the concluding statistic. 31 per cent of exhibitors and 46 per cent of visitors were new to IPEX. Nearly half of the visitors had never been to an IPEX before – quite an amazing figure. It seems there is more optimism in emerging print markets than traditional ones.

My call:

If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are; it’s a duck.

What do I mean by this? Well, here’s what I see from the stats. emanating from the world’s largest English-language graphic arts trade event:

• The rapid emergence of so-called ‘third world’ markets such as India and Eastern Europe as printing powerhouses
  
• Digital printing moving from complementing offset, to gradual replacement in some areas as variable print and short-runs increase in demand
  
• Consolidation of most offset onto large, highly-automated and very productive presses and away from A3 and even B2 formats, which will trend towards digital.
  
• The emergence of ‘super offset’ plants where production is so efficient that customers can’t tell (and don’t care) if it is digital or offset.
  
• Entrants from ‘outside of the industry’ taking huge slices of the print pie either as in-plants or greenfield start-ups; all with digital.
  
• A necessary further consolidation at supplier-level, coupled with new supplier entrants from the IT and OA fields.
  
• Fewer people employed with print trade skills, but more employed with all-round IT, data management and marketing skills.

Just as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses were nailed to the church door in Wittenburg, 1517, signaling the beginning of the Reformation, the printing industry is receiving a signal that its own reformation is inevitable, as this IPEX report shows.

It took a few years before the historical Reformation really got underway. We all need to be well prepared for our own print reformation, lest we end up eating a ‘diet of worms.’