New motivation: Digital printing will continue to grow

According to the latest statistical reports released by PODI and Canon, the digital printing revenue in Australia and the world has increased significantly in the past year.

The PODI report shows that the number of digital prints in Australia rose slightly last year, with the number of color pages increasing by 55%.

The study found that Australian digital printing companies produced 13.8 billion A4 pages in 2009, an increase of about 1% from 13.6 billion in 2008.

The output of monochrome pages decreased by 9% to 10.4 billion, but the number of color pages increased by 55% (3.4 billion), and the total output of digital printing increased.

Because of this, the proportion of color pages in all digital pages has also increased from 16% to 25%. And because of the high value of color pages, this report predicts that the revenue from Australian production digital printing will increase by about 20%.

It is understood that the PODI report is based on a survey of digital equipment suppliers such as Canon, Fuji Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Konica Minolta, Océ and Ricoh.

At the same time, Canon’s report also stated that 58% of digital printing suppliers achieved profit/operating income increase in 2009, and only 31% of non-digital printing service providers have grown.

The report concludes that by investigating 840 printing companies worldwide, 26% of all printing companies that have weathered the economic crisis have invested in digital and offset printing equipment.

Mark Harvey, general manager of printing systems for Canon Australia, said: “With more and more customers reducing the number of prints, many print service providers have tried to use offset presses to meet customers’ short-run printing needs. The result was found to be less effective. Therefore, only those printing companies that invest in digital printing equipment can benefit from it."

Since the 1990s, the global printing market has been shrinking, and the global economic crisis has had a negative impact on the industry as a whole. Although the industry's shrinking speed has slowed down, we still need to distinguish which markets will continue to grow. Which will not.