drupa 2016 – driving the future trends!

The 3rd drupa Global Trends report, tracking key economic and market developments in the global print industry over the crucial period leading to drupa 2016 and beyond, has been released. This is based on a survey conducted in October 2015 in which almost 1250 participants took part globally with all regions well represented.

This year the picture is subtler with North America confident and Europe recovering steadily, but many of the other regions, whilst still positive overall, express significantly more caution than last year. As many as 37% of the global panel of printers described their current condition in 2015 as good and 12% said their condition was poor. Looking ahead, printers were, in general, more positive, with 50% expecting their economic condition to improve in 2016 compared with just 6% expecting it to deteriorate.

Coming to the growth in various printing segments, digital technologies (particularly cutsheet colour: 28%) dominate in terms of growth in print volume. However, there is still growth in sheetfed offset, thanks to publishing (7%) and packaging (12%). The growth in flexo and gravure is from packaging (18% and 3% respectively), and the growth in screen from functional (11%). The report also states that printers serving the functional and packaging markets remain very positive for the future, but those serving the commercial market were cautious and those serving the publishing market even more so.

Talking about digital print, the report states that there is a steady increase in the volume and value of digital print, with the exception of packaging where only 13% reporting that it represents more than 25% of turnover compared to 35% for commercial, 24% for publishing and 59% for functional. This result is in turn driven by the proportion of digital print that is variable, with 59% of functional printers and 35% of commercial printers reporting that more than 25% of their digital turnover was variable by value.

With such interesting insights into the market, the printing world is gearing towards Dusseldorf – the mecca of publishing – drupa 2016, which will set the benchmark for the next three years (until the next drupa arrives). We are bringing a comprehensive report of some of the important technologies and products on offer in this issue. Also, we have tried to incorporate a feature on Dusseldorf, to help you explore it at your leisure time.

Wishing you a successful drupa!

Sonal Khurana
sonal@smediagroup.in