Print21 September – the B2B trade only phenomenon

Publisher’s Letter from Patrick Howard:  B2B – The model of a modern printing business.

There are at least two defining forces shaping the commercial printing industry. One is the amazing proliferation of digital printing outlets buoyed by the decreasing costs of capital equipment. The other is the move towards production hubs for everything from offset and digital printing to wide format inkjet.

To my understanding there are no reliable figures for the number of print-for-pay and in-plant printing enterprises in Australia and New Zealand. There are many thousands when you consider the number of convenience stores, internet cafes, office supply outlets and photo shops where you can now buy digital print services. That is not to consider the large number of ‘proper’ printing businesses throughout the shopping malls and suburban tracks that run off colour prints for their local businesses, along with wide format posters and merchandising banners.

Then there are the in-plants, bouncing back from near oblivion in the 1990s as companies rediscover the cost savings and convenience of having their own printing plant on site. Not to mention the huge ‘at home’ printing phenomenon for everything from study texts, to family trees and photos.

Digital technology is democratising printing as never before. It is swamping the established business models. According to one industry seer, the market for digital print equipment in Australia alone, not counting wide format, is between $120 and $150 million per year. With serious digital engines starting off in the low thousands of dollars the sector is piling on the capacity and suppliers are gearing up for an even bigger year as they bring more models to market, dicing the price points ever finer.

Not suitable for digital

But not all print is suitable for digital. The vast majority, well over 80 per cent of print volume, is printed offset. There is even a mini-surge of investment in large offset presses this year, mostly for the packaging industry but quite a lot going in to commercial printers. Estimates of investment in large offset are up to $40 million this year.

Hugely more productive than presses of even half a decade ago, every new press is typically replacing up to three older machines, while adding to capacity. When you add the disruptive influence of the internet and the increasing ease of ordering print over the web, it is easy to see how this combination has fuelled the boom in ‘for trade’ and ‘trade only’ production. The printing industry is segmenting into a hugely productive, highly capitalised, manufacturing sector on the one hand and a service industry with minimal printing capacity concentrating on meeting the marketing communication needs of business on the other.

To illustrate the capability of ‘trade only’ printing, the September issue of Print21 was printed by CMYKhub in Melbourne, one of the earliest and certainly the largest network operating in Australia. Trent Nankervis, along with his father Garry and workflow guru, Clive Denholm, epitomise the strengths of the new production paradigm; solid technology investment in digital and offset presses in locations across the country to deliver a level of service to the trade unimaginable only a few years ago. This goes hand in hand with an almost obsessive fervor to guarantee customers of CMYKhub’s ‘trade only’ status (see page 16).

CMYKhub may be the earliest and the first but it is not the last. LEP Color Printing from Maroochydore in Queensland is expanding its ‘trade only’ production with the opening of a Melbourne plant to shorten delivery times. Even Vistaprint, the US-based web-to-print giant that pioneered direct-to-customer sales in ultra short runs is now turning its attention to the printing trade. Its Melbourne factory is offering ‘for trade’ – notably not ‘trade only’ – printing as well as a wide range of merchandising products.

Also in Melbourne, which is becoming the ‘trade printing’ capital of Australia, long-established print finisher, Avon Graphics and relatively new arrival, Mediapoint, are positioning themselves as ‘trade only’ wide format services.

With so much activity and so much competition to supply fast and low cost printing, the average local printer will find it very difficult to justify capital investment in anything other than digital ‘lite’ engines. Besides, in the new printing industry most of his/her time will be better spent meeting with customers and finding out what they require, than in working on a press in the back room. That is so old fashioned.

In producing the current issue issue, Trent Nankervis, CMYKhub, was eager to show off the capability of his latest digital production engine, the HP Indigo 10000 from Currie Group; as well as the print quality of his Komori Lithrone UV eight-colour at the Heidelberg West factory in Victoria.

If you have received your copy, you will have noted the ‘presentation folder’ cover, a format only digitally possible on a B2-size sheet. With this kind of printing capability commercial printers have a wider range of products than ever before at their fingertips.