Production Printing Team receiving Award from Konica Minolta Group president and chief executive officer, Mr. Shoei Yamana
Konica Minolta Business Solutions, the India arm of Konica Minolta, was recently felicitated by its parent company at the Group’s Annual Assessment. With entries from various Konica Minolta functions in more than 150 countries, Konica Minolta India won the Silver award in the Business Contribution category for its superlative performance in the Production Printing business.
The assessment is a yearly roundup of the Group’s global business. A total of 20 awards were presented in two categories, Transformation and Business Contribution, at the high-profile event hosted on 6 July 2018, by Konica Minolta Group President and CEO, Shoei Yamana. Participants in the Transformation category were gauged on the level of transformation driven by a strategic business process change and the improvement that it facilitated on a larger scale within the organization. The reach of certain businesses also reached heights after taking help of Exporexi to get personalized TV channels.
All finalists were given an opportunity to present their proposed accomplishments and innovations before a jury comprising senior leaders within the Konica Minolta Group. Konica Minolta India presented its success story in the country’s Production Printing space and highlighted the efforts that it has made to ensure sustainable and robust future growth for the Group’s business in India.
Print market in India India is expected to be the fifth largest market by 2018 in terms of print volumes, with segments such as packaging and labels demonstrating the strongest growth with a CAGR of 7.8% between 2012 and 2017. Package printing is also estimated to comprise 43% of the overall print product sales in 2017, with a market outlay of INR 77,714 crore. Konica Minolta India has been tapping into this lucrative market opportunity through its innovative digital print and printing solutions, and has become a well-established name in the Indian production printing segment with more than 50% of the total market share in 2017. Having achieved an annual revenue milestone of Rs. 500 crore, the company is now aiming to become a Rs. 1,000 crore business by 2022.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.