New Technology, Products, Software, & Services
DIGITAL & INKJET ON THE
UPWARD CURVE AGAIN A look at the industry during a pandemic drupa year By Ralf Schlözer
L
ast year was tough for many and digital print felt the impact as well. But thanks to new product launches, digital print in commercial and document print should be on the upward curve again. One year after the 2020 Technology Week is a good point in time to examine the status of digital print following the great disruptions the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the market. From the onset of the pandemic there was a lot of debate about how the economy would recover after lockdown and severe business disruptions. What we have seen so far is a V-shaped or, in some cases, a reverse square root recovery. The latter stands for an initial quick recovery after a deep cut, with the recovery stalling at a somewhat lower level than pre-pandemic. Commercial and document printing is a mix of both. Book printing volumes
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for example made up the losses during the lockdown. Direct mail, magazines rebounded, but still stand at a lower level. A look at U.S. commercial printing shipment data shows that print shipments for the second half of 2020 trail those of 2019, being typically
considerable differences among the countries, however. Other sources show similar developments. Heidelberger Duckmaschinen presents a socalled “Print Media Climate Index,” based on print volumes produced on 6,000 Heidelberg sheetfed presses. The data is
half a billion U.S. dollars lower per month than in pre-COVID times. January 2021 continues in that vein. Production index data from Eurostat for Europe shows volumes, after an initial quick recovery, still about 10% below the pre-COVID average at the end of 2020. There are
gathered anonymously from connected presses, grouped for selected countries and compared to pre-COVID volumes. According to the latest set of data from December 2020, print volumes in the U.S. reached pre-COVID levels again, while volumes in Canada are already
WhatTheyThink - Printing News | May 2021
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