Letter from the Publisher – Print21 magazine
Benny Landa at the last drupa was asked why an individual such as he, with all his wealth, fame and experience, would invest his time and energies in inventing a new form of printing, Nanography, when it is obvious that printing is in decline. He replied that, apart from the fact that he knows and likes the printing industry, one could only work to the horizon – not beyond it.
Landa’s printing horizon is projected from the arrival of the millennials, those people, kids really, who were born on or after the turn of the century. These are the people who have never known a world without the internet, Google, Facebook, Twitter. They are often referred to as ‘digital natives’, and they acquire information and entertainment in a totally different way from people who were born last century.
They will start coming into positions of power and influence in their thirties, in about 20 years time, and we have no idea how they are going to respond to print. Will they still use it for anything? Will there be a retro culture of book reading? Are there likely to be any newspapers or magazines still around and, if so, will they be read by the millennials or by their elders, those who acquired the habit in the 20th century?
The answers to these questions are simply unknown, according to Landa. But we do know that until then, until the ‘digital natives’ start setting the cultural agenda, there will be a relatively thriving printing industry that can provide good business not only for printers but for equipment suppliers and, yes, even inventors of new forms of printing. The horizon is 20 years away and you can only plan and work as far as that.
That’s what Landa is doing and it should be the blueprint for our printing industry. Printers can plan with a fair degree of surety towards their own horizon, whether they agree with Landa’s theory or not. There is plenty of time and scope for investing in printing technology for anyone who intends to stay in the industry. Printing is not going to fall off a cliff. Paper companies are factoring in a five per cent decline in volumes for the foreseeable future, but that is coming off a substantial base.
There are other, far more defining factors shaping the industry than the future of print. Consolidation of print companies is not being driven by the fall in printing volumes but by a combination of an aging ownership demographic of craft printers wanting to retire, by increased competition driven by vastly more productive technology and by changing printing technologies, read digital printing and web-to-print.
During recent weeks I conducted a straw poll among suppliers of printing plates as to the number of plate-using printers there are in Australia. In other words, offset printers.
David Currie, who has been around a while, recalled using a database of 15,000 in the 1980s but said he would be struggling now to identify 2,000. Richard Timson, Heidelberg, said there were over 7,000 on the company’s books at the turn of the century but came in around 1,500 now. Steve Venn, Kodak, hazarded somewhere between the two – 1,500 to 2,200. Remarkably, the volume of plates has remained fairly stable even as run lengths have come down. It means there is still the same number of printing jobs.
The 2,000 (say) plate-using printers left are operating in a hyper-competitive market but many are thriving thanks to their investment in the latest technology. Fast change-around offset presses, some equipped with UV drying, are competing with digital, even as the digital press suppliers are experiencing what can easily be called boom times. Digital finishing equipment is walking out of the stock rooms while offset post-press machinery is holding steady by all accounts.
The pressure of the market is keeping the local industry up to and ahead of the world in terms of technology, with New Zealand, as always, edging slightly ahead in its willingness to adopt early and experiment. The failure of the merger between IPMG and Blue Star now leaves both companies facing a fairly hefty challenge to invest in new presses. Together they were likely to be unchallengeable, separate they are vulnerable to any number of kitted-up commercial printers with the latest technology.
Now is not the time to hold back due to any misconception about the strength of the printing industry. Now is the time to set out towards your own technology horizon.