Print Industry Outlook is Upbeat

Sustained economic growth and smart adoption of technologies to create new value-added services have helped put the U.S. printing industry in its strongest position in many years.

That was the consensus of the speakers at the first NPES Industry Summit, held recently in Chicago. It provided an optimistic view of print’s current and future prospects and a preview of the world’s most promising future growth markets.

The Summit, presented by NPES The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies, combined the 26th edition of the PRINT OUTLOOK economic forecasting conference with the NPES Spring Conference and the Spring meeting of PRIMIR, the Print Industries Market Information and Research Organization.

“I don’t think I have been this optimistic in at least 15 years,” proclaimed NPES Vice President William K. “Kip” Smythe, as he opened the event.

Ronnie Davis, chief economist at PIA/GATF, agreed, noting that U.S. printers’ sales reached $171 billion in 2006, a gain of 3.3 percent over the previous year and a major rebound from a low point of about $156 billion in 2002.

Davis said PIA/GATF forecasts increases of about 1.5 percent in 2007 and 2.5 percent in 2008. Significant growth is coming from new digital and “ancillary” services printers are adding to their portfolios, Davis said.

Joseph Truncale, president of NAPL, reported that “sales grew at their fastest rate in eight years in 2006 and will continue to grow, although at a noticeably slower pace, in 2007.”

Keynote speaker Dr. Joseph Webb noted that “all media are experimental today because the relationships between them have changed so dramatically.” He said the challenge for printers was not only to be “modern” today but to “figure out how to be modern 18 months from now. It’s not your competitors you have to worry about, it’s your clients. You have to find a way to stay ahead of them.”

NPES Consulting Economist Michael Evans predicted there will be a slowdown in the national economy in 2007, but no recession. He said the media coverage of the recent reverses in mortgage lending was overstated and these developments did not represent a major threat to the total economy.