Megatrends at drupa – Andy McCourt plays his top ten

In his final commentary from Messé Düsseldorf, Andy McCourt decides on the ten Megatrends shaping the industry at Drupa 2008. These are the forces you must be aware of in order to survive.

As the throb of the oopmah-band fades from the Bavarian beer tent, as the miasma of humidifiers clears, as the clink of steins in the Altstadt reduces to a tintinnabulation of pings and the thumping parody of Queen’s “We will, we will … Print you … print you” is consigned to the one-hit wonders league, I am about to farewell this 2008, and greatest of all Drupas, with a capital ‘D.’

Many issues begging answers pre-Drupa were competently addressed but there remain many unanswered questions concerning the future of print communications. Packaging we can leave aside as an ever-expanding print-related sector for, as Professor Frank Romano quipped: “You can’t put cornflakes inside a DVD.”

There are known knowns, there are known unknowns, there may even be unknown knowns but it’s the unknown unknowns that are real buggers. There is enough ink, paper and technology in the world to lead the printing industry into a bold new era of irrelevance. On the other hand, there is also enough to re-invent and re-energise print in a manner that would make Gutenberg and Caxton proud. Let us not forget that it was the mission of such men, and Whycliffe, to Cause a mere boy whose hand guideth a plough, to know as much of the Scriptures as the most learned priest.

In other words, democracy, education, knowledge, egalitarianism, anti-racism, anti-tyranny and counter-terrorism; all these noble endeavours and much more spring from printed communications. Transpromo was probably not a term used in the 1450s, but I am sure printing’s pioneers would approve.

As I prepare to leave Drupa 2008, I am left wondering when Heidelberg will re-enter the digital printing sphere? Their first attempt was abortive but the biggest sales at Drupa have been for multiple HP Indigo 7000s, and this is a space Heidelberg would have inhabited if it had been able to carry its NexPress venture through instead of relinquishing it to Kodak. 2009 marks the end of the no-compete clause of the sale of NexPress division, it will be fascinating to see if digital continues to be ignored by the industry’s flagship brand. Ignored is probably too harsh since Heidelberg in fact exhibited a digital inkjet concept press at Interpack in April, under the ‘Linoprint’ brand. Hmmmm ...

On Man Roland, sorry manroland, where was the Dicoweb, the pioneer of all high-end digital? On KBA, if there were Karat 74s there I could not find them. Such press giants are expert at handling paper at high speed, maybe all they need to do is add an inkjet station or two in-line to be digital again?

But digital is no safe haven, during Drupa, Punch Graphix/Xeikon shares were hammered on the Euronext exchange. Really hammered. Machine sales 23% down, overall sales 13% down and a loss of $5 or $6 million but “not as much as expected.” On the other hand, every five minutes it seemed HP had taken another order for half a dozen Indigo 7000s (you only had to buy two at a time in 1993 when they were launched!)

So, with great trepidation and fear of being wrong (my fallacies are not always wrong!), here are my ten Megatrends that I hope will be useful to you in thinking about how to shape your printing businesses in the coming years. Auf Wiedersehen alles!

1) Digital Colour Web - The biggest Megatrend. It just scraped in to be shown at Drupa (with the exception of Océ who had the JetStream ready for market and is installing them right after the show). The new breed of Inkjet Web Presses will demolish the sheetfed-versus-continuous feed divide and make the output just output. HP’s ‘dromedary camel-shaped’ Inkjet Web Press blasted the most spin out, Kodak’s Stream Concept Press vowed to alter the industry the most, Ricoh/IBM’s InfoPrint 5000 springboarded a copier company into the big league, an unknown French outfit ‘Impika’ presented a very competent pilot 600 x 600dpi Xaar-headed machine, Xerox may have been caught flat-footed but will catch up; Canon has no continuous feed to speak of and that must be a huge concern for them; Screen pushed their TruePress Jet520 to the fore whilst hiding their renowned CTP at the back and Miyakoshi and Dotrix/Agfa added UV to the inkjet equation for added colour oomph. Just wait until IPEX 2010 to see how all these and other inkjet web trends have developed, two years is a long time in product development, it will amaze – promise.
2) Convergence of the office and printshop – As digital, mostly inkjet based rather than toner, moves upstream into offset, the slower cut-sheet colour end, mostly toner, will be resurgent in the offices of the world. It’s almost like a return to implants but without the sweaty guy in overalls in the basement playing with his AB Dick. We’re taking probably up to 80ppm colour models with inline finishing here, and maybe even a return to inhouse data-driven printing by the big corporates and banks. Whatever, offices will be taking on ‘production lite’ digital colour, much of which is outsourced now. Interesting to note FedEx Kinko’s just changed its name to FedEx Office.
3) Paper, ink and consumable price hikes – Get used to these, just as the oil industry has had to. Three years ago oil was around $40 a barrel. A friend of mine in that business said, when oil dropped to $16 a barrel “Twenty-six dollars is okay and ideal.” Now it’s over $120 a barrel. Exercising impeccable timing, plate, film, ink and paper companies all announced price rises during the word’s main printing trade fair. Up to 20% on plates, 6-8% on paper. The only way printers can combat these is to print smarter, greener and get production costs down.
4) Carbon Footprints – Every industry and every player therein will be held accountable for the amount of CO2, VOCs, Methane and Nitrous Gasses released into the atmosphere. Every piece of machinery will be rated, judged and bought on this basis. What a Carbon Footprint actually is, is still a bit fuzzy but rest assured the formula for calculating it will be devised and applied to our industry. Fortunately, Australian and New Zealand printers are well advanced in becoming carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative. We should all get behind the APIA initiative. Trees lock up carbon. More managed tree plantations = more carbon locked up and the fibre is recycled four or five times. Has anyone ever recycled their 1995 laptop into a new up-to-date laptop?
5) Smart Binderies – The stars of Drupa for me were the bindery and paper-handling suppliers. Here you see finished products, not just sheets or reels. The advances made in bringing high-end bindery technologies down to the digital on-demand level are amazing and firms like Horizon, Duplo, Plockmatic, Hunkeler, Mueller Martini, Lasermax, CP Bourg and even MBO have re-invented themselves. Bindery staffs are always the hardest to find but the new smart bindery kit can be operated by semi-skilled people in a clean office-like environment. This Megatrend is all about automated paper handling.
6) Generation Z rediscovers print – You know, the only people I hear debating the ‘death of print’ these days are over 40. Gen Z-ers see it as cool and funky and love the creative possibilities it offers. I asked one pierced, tattooed and bechained Drupa visitor, toting enough print samples to break a camel’s back, what he though of the paperless office. “What’s that?” he replied with genuine amazement. Enough said. I just kissed him (or was it a her?) and wished a great day and wonderful life.
7) Neck-and-neck technologies – As digital output rounds the last corner into the straight and heads for the finishing line; it’s virtually neck-and-neck. So success will not come from the technologies themselves, as it has so often in the past, but from the support, application, service and pull-through marketing that reaches the customer’s customer. Suppliers need deep pockets and even deeper understanding of markets. There will be casualties. In the CTP world, who remembers Barco, Gerber, Cymbolic Sciences, Scitex, ICG, Creo, and Purup etc? They were all swallowed up until the winners crossed the finishing line – Agfa, Kodak, Fuji, Screen, ECRM, Mitsubishi and so forth. So when looking at technology, look beyond it and into the company selling it. How well will they support you, because the difference between their technology and the next supplier may not be all that great.
8) India and China – China and India, India and China, China and India. You know what I mean. Unbelievable growth. Unmatchable prices. Unless you think hard on how to offer unique ‘value propositions’ to your customers and get them to change the way they buy print. In little runs delivered same-day would be good. Then some more tomorrow.
9) Fragmentation of print markets – This covers many areas but one example is magazines. Good old stable titles are dropping their circulation or closing (e.g. Cosmopolitan, Cleo – down; The Bulletin, New Woman – out), but new special interest titles are emerging. If I were a magazine publisher I would look at ways to present alternative versions of the ‘prime title’ content and also start a new focused title every month. Book production is also ripe for fragmentation with daily deliveries of paperbacks to retailers of digitally printed titles from a central digital book printer. No more 40% of the print run to the pulpers.
10) Netization of print – We all acknowledge that the internet has changed the ways humanity interacts with information. Print needs to “Netize” the way it presents to societies. Be more immediate, be more ephemeral, be responsive, changing, adaptive and present as the ‘net’s best friend. A Dutch Publishing concern – Printofoon – has trail blazed in this with an initiative where special interest individuals, e.g cyclists, can click a series of areas of interest on the website and a magazine is delivered to their door with that tailored content along with the regular advertising the title would contain.