At the Print Business Outlook Conference in Chennai on 18 February 2014 several presentations discussed the future of the industry as a whole and also addressed the outlook for segments such as newspapers and digital printing.
The US Consulate’s principle commercial officer in Chennai, Jim Golsen, began the proceedings by quoting Nancy Powell the US ambassador to India. “The business of the US embassy is business,” he said, while also speaking about the consulate’s increasingly reaching out to the smaller cities in South India including Madurai, Coimbatore, Kochi and Vishakapatnam.
The NPES president Ralph Nappi presented some of the results of an extensive research project conducted for it by the EIU that indicated that the worldwide print industry growth from 2013 to 2017 would grow by a CAGR of 8% with the non-OECD countries making up 7.2% of this CAGR while the developed OECD countries would grow by only .
8%. Nappi’s presentation showed that within the top ten print markets, the highest growth in the next five years would be China at a CAGR of 8.7% and India at 6.8%. As far as product categories, his presentation forecast a continuing shift toward packaging with other segments remaining the same or declining slightly.
Interestingly, Nappi’s data showed that publishing in the non-OECD countries would continue to grow at a CAGR of more than 7.8% second only to packaging with a CAGR of 8.3%.
He suggested that printers try and catch the high growth rate in packaging and labels while another alternatives could be to shift to a diversified portfolio of services as a business model. However, the improvement of print eco-friendliness would have to be taken as a given in the coming and somewhat unpredictable future.
Nappi advocated preparation and anticipation of disruptive trends. “Stay ahead of the disruption or disrupt the disruptor,” he said. K Balaji, director of Kasturi and Sons spoke about some of the market needs and challenges that face the newspaper industry worldwide.
In particular, he addressed the sustainability of production of newspapers. “There is a wrong perception that printing on paper is not environmental friendly and that trees have to be cut down to make paper. The reality is that only 11% of wood from forestry is used for paper making while increasingly inputs come from waste paper. And Europe’s forest area has grown by 30% over the
last 60 years.” Moreover, Balaji suggested that there is a need for perspective: “The environmental impact of producing a 48-page broadsheet newspaper – its green house gas emission is similar to driving a car for anywhere from 1.1 to 1.3 kilometres or watching television for five to six hours.”
He presented an entire system for calculating the life cycle cost and carbon footprint of newspapers as well some recommendations such as improving the process efficiency of newspaper production by using modern machines and the use of lower basis weight and recycled newsprints.
Presentations at the Print Business Outlook event included the introduction of a new curing approach for print using LED-based UV curing by Steve Metcalf, the president and CEO of Air Motion Systems which also ceremoniously signed an agreement with APL at the event. Steve Ballinger, director of training at IDEAlliance in the US made the case for standardization and color management with his presentation on Color Management for Printing and Packaging: Piloting Brand Color Through the Media Supply Chain.
There were presentations from HP, Konica Minolta and QuadTech on digital print and automating quality control in the pressroom, while BS Kampani managing director of Toyo Ink in India presented an overview of the packaging industry in India. In the newspaper session, Balasubramaniam, head of marketing at Dinamalar spoke of several cross media implementations by his newspaper group. Kiruba Shankar, the blogger and social media marketing expert took the opportunity to explain the possibilities of using social media to expand print sales to the commercial printers in the audience with an interactive group exercise. CN Ashok of Autoprint spoke about his company’s practice in using a Balanced Scorecard.
This is a strategy performance management tool for reporting that can be used to track execution of tasks and to monitor their consequences. Overall the conference provided both an overview of the print business outlook and some inputs on new technologies and ideas for the printers and publishers who participated in the one day event followed by an evening get-together
